Monica Lynn Manoski

Sisters in This Ritual Monica Lynn Manoski

The poems in Monica Lynn Manoski's sisters in this ritual weave an esoteric spell for close relationships and healing. In black and white photography and verse, this collection calls out-in Rumi-like fashion-to the ecstatic other-a dear friend, the coastal New England landscape, and creation itself. Its lush language alchemically transforms an experience into art, "black as charcoal / white like snow / iridescent metallic spill / yellow feather glow / like red blood." These poems-created during a hybrid artist's residency, which involved seasonal escapes to Cape Ann, MA with her best friend-rise from the primal, mythic dust, are watered at the ocean's edge, and ethereally wander the earth as the boundaries between self and other dissolve. "We come and go / our bodies covered in holes / through which rivers flow / if we're open / we recede deeper / into what we become." Indeed, Manoski's words open and pour through the reader so that we, too, share these sister-friends' "skin hunger" for the healing earth-its sacred ash, cleansing waters, and pneumatic breath. When the seaside journey ends, we long to return to these pages, which serve as relics of a profound experience. We find ourselves-along with the poet and her companion-drawn into relationship, transformed, and "wearing the secrets of this place all over our hands."