The remarkable and wholly insightful poems collected here bounce the reader through a world where words are not bricks but trampolines—springy, un-static-y things. Feisty, spirited, serious and comic, these poems address a wild range of subjects with an equally wild range of tones. As readers, we find ourselves holding on with white knuckles, but we always want to turn the page.

The most modern of roller coasters ride on soft rubber tires and slithery smooth tracks. Gone are the days of jouncing along on steel wheels, smacking over hard metal joints. So it is with this book. Although readers are hurtled through time, space, and a universe of emotions, the ride is seductively smooth—and the transitions surprisingly seamless.

In the prologue, our attention bends to bridges, free-tail bats, soldiers, and peacemakers. These poems prepare us to watch for hopeful signs in the work ahead. In the first section, the spiritual seems to flow into the geopolitical—not in a hammer-you-over-the-head kind of way but in a blood-through-the-heart sort of way. In the second section, the spiritual mingles with the organic in a more personal way. By the end of the ride, we are aware that we have taken a trip with an intellectually fearless bushwhacker leading the way.

Anyone who has ever contemplated The Simpsons, sex-offender registries, desert internment camps, bats in flight, wars that never end, “la virgen,” grasshoppers, Google, or the cosmos will find a kindred spirit in Maria Melendez and a warm welcome in her work.

Let go your keys, let go your gun, let go your good pen and your rings, let your wolf mask go and kiss goodbye your goddess figurine.

With this invocation, María Meléndez beckons us on a journey—an exotic expedition through life’s mysteries in search of the finer strands of experience. In a Latina voice laced with a naturalist’s sense of wonder, she weaves bold images reflecting a world threaded by unseen wounds, now laid before us with an unflinching love of life and an exquisite precision of language. Adopting multiple guises—field researcher, laboring mother, grief-stricken lover—Meléndez casts aside stereotypes and expectations to forge a new language steeped in life and landscape. Whether meditating on a controlled prairie burn or contemplating the turquoise cheek of a fathead minnow, she weaves words and memories into a rich tapestry that resonates with sensual detail and magnifies her sense of maternal wildness, urging us to “Love as much as you / can, don’t throw your heart / away to just one god.” In her paean to the Aztec deity Tonacacihuatl, mother of the gods, Meléndez muses that “How many spirits she’s twin to, and how long she’ll last in this world, / are secrets stashed in the rattle / of corn ears, in the coils / of venomous snakes.”

Through stunning images and stark realism, her poems embrace motherhood and vocation, love and grief, land and life, to bring new meaning to the natural world and how we experience it.