"Cleave" means both to cut something in half and to hold fast to a body or object we hold dear. Hillary Brown's poems investigate the remade female self after brain surgery: an operation that cleaves her vision of herself and the world, but also allows her to imagine a self more fully cleaved to the world she inhabits, where the tongue becomes a "prickly pear/ blossom open/ for rain, " and any anonymous young woman can still "be fearless, full to bursting, free.">Hilary Brown is one of those poets who doesn't look away. Who invites you to stare and meets your eyes with her own always steady gaze-even when the world is unsteady, full of loss and all the slow death capitalism has on offer. These poems provide something else, aching bright and sharp. They sing the queer body, the disabled body. They know about not having enough to eat, about country roads, about church and how to live through it. These poems know, most of all, "There's power in there, holding / the discomfort of it close."-Stephanie Young" />