me drawing a picture of me[n] by Rachelle Escamilla

Poetry collection by Rachelle Escamilla.  A book of poems set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 2008 election. The poems speak to various (usually white) male figures in time from the perspective of a Chicana who has just been diagnosed with a number of poverty-related illnesses. In me drawing a picture of me[n], Rachelle Escamilla deftly captures the all-at-once-ness that is the basis of ecstacy in an ordinary life—when the threshold states of elation, despair and unknowing are experienced in rapid succession, alternating, blurring and at times joining together so that a person finds themself wrenched by sensations and standing outside themself, observing themself as they are touched exquisitely or ruthlessly by the people, localities and predicaments shaping their particular fate. Here it is the American city of Pittsburgh, where the foundational American problems of racial injustice, poverty, and political reckoning (or lackthereof), meet the universals of love, desire, natura