Name Me

Fortunate Daughter Press, 2010

“As the title, Name Me, suggests, Kim Noriega’s superb   collection of poems is a journey of self-discovery, capturing high-voltage moments of anguish, abuse, and tenderness, beginning with family then lovers. This is hard-core poetry for hard-core life, but with nothing crude about it—just stunning clarity.”—Jeffrey Greene

“These are brave poems that tell us the stories that live underneath the surface of our lives. They show us the vulnerability in a young girl’s world: ‘What does anyone know of the open palm/ her small world rests upon?’; the danger in that world: ‘Your hand at the small of my back/ your teeth at my throat’; how it is shattered: ‘he moves his fingers/ to your throat/…whispers:/ If I squeeze a little harder’; and how it is healed: ‘It was you, beloved,/ who taught the trees/ my name.’  These are poems that matter.”—Ellen Bass