And Other Desert Cities, by Andrea Gomez

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Part love letter, part warning, And Other Desert Cities maps the body as landscape and the desert as both womb and wound. Grounded in nature, this collection explores what belonging means in a space that is always shifting. Spanning across different hours of a desert day, this debut chapbook lingers in faultlines, creosote, sand dunes, and the ache of longing.

Highway billboards, curious coyotes, brush fires all simmer close to the heart and challenge the reader to recognize and recollect their own belonging to the environment. And Other Desert Cities is a sun-drenched, intimate ode to the liminal heat where memory lives in the flesh, and the land – raw and untamed – remembers it all.

Andrea Gomez is a Mexican American writer born and raised in the low deserts of Southern California. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California.