Grasshoppers Before Gods

Dancing Girl Press

“Karla Cordero’s Grasshoppers Before Gods (dancing girl press & studio, 2016) burns in the Southern California heat. It is a mouth dry with desert dust. It is a powerful lament (My country/ licks the cheeks of a boy/ they shot/ & another boy they shot/ & when they shot a third boy/ My country/ like a lost dog/ slept*); it is a testament to heritage and the female self (There are wounded sparrows between my lips,/ a choir in shackles, broken beaks & rusted tongues,/ new scars behind feathered backs, caged-throats/ screaming for privilege,/ turns parrot color mocking a white kid’s tune.**)

Karla Cordero’s Grasshoppers Before Gods is beautiful, rapt with imagery so specific it sticks with you long after you’ve put the book away.”

—Kolleen Carney Hoepfner, Editor-in-Chief, Drunk Monkey’s