“The poems in Priscilla Wathington’s debut chapbook Paper & Stick sharply probe the way language both limns and shadows atrocities. Wathington deftly blurs the lines between voices of the innocent/oppressed and the official language of a state bent on breaking the soul of Palestinian life, namely the family. Through her pinpointing ellipses and fragmentary narratives, Wathington engineers an aesthetic disquiet, creating a complicit intimacy for the reader. Most remarkable are her descriptions of children’s experiences in the face of militarized abuse: “what happened to me was a mouth | white Kia pulled over…”, or when she documents a kidnapping, “they took us | like lanternfish that dark away with their tiny lights |.” Her poems are a commanding beguilement and crackle with brilliance.”
-Deema K. Shehabi, author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon
Cover image: “Forgotten” by Manal Deeb, ygalleri.com
Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and human rights advocate. Her poems and other writings have appeared in Gulf Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Salamander, Matter, The Normal School, Mizna, Sukoon, Al Jadid, and +972 Magazine, among others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Author photo by Chad Wathington
Paper and Stick by Priscilla Wathington
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