Guillotine: Poems by Eduardo C. Corral

Guillotine traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayals lingering scars, the border itselfgreat distances in which violence and yearning find roots. Through the voices of undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and scorned lovers, award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral writes dramatic portraits of contradiction, survival, and a deeply human, relentless interiority. With extraordinary lyric imagination, these poems wonder about being unwanted or renounced. What do we do with unrequited love? Is it with or without it that we would waste away?

In the sequence Testaments Scratched into Water Station Barrels, with Corrals seamless integration of Spanish and English, poems curve around the surfaces upon which they are written, overlapping like graffiti left by those who may or may not have survived crossing the border. A harrowing second collection, Guillotine solidifies Corrals place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.

Paperback August 4, 2020