Against Sky's Warm Belly

The poems of Sarah Cortez flex lean muscles to build lyric intensity and a gripping edginess often backlit by an incandescent, controlled eroticism. Cortez reveals the hidden underworld of her fellow police officers, whose lives comprise the thin blue line and whose blood sometimes splashes and blackens on summer concrete.

Aquarium And what of the water?

A transparency

we swim through, lithe

white muscle,

the glide of fins.

We move and move

forever inside reflections,

refractions, ruckus

from the other side.

Our eyes never close.

We see you

coming.

We don't think

we're dinner.