My poetic respose:

Wild as a desert, savage as bigots and wolves
Refined & experimental as Lorca
Stained, ravaged, hopeless, despair
"Ants trapse crucifix bodies" (a paraphrase)
Immigrant life at home, wandering

My review:
Darkness, despair, hopelessness, and self-loathing are cliché in poetry publishing and the human experience is a bloody black hole. Corral, in his book, narrowly escapes the trend bringing imagery that skirts the tired and claws into new, infected depths. It is indeed devoid of hope, but makes it genius again.

The 1.5 anf 2nd gen poetry is chaulk full of confusion, exclusion, poverty, and linguistic melding. It is an entirely new way of thought, but a worldview subjected to perish in a 3rd generation. Corall's work makes me, a white male, want to slice my abdomen and see the limbs of others I have devoured spill out. I want to blow the alacranes from my nostrils and inhale them all over again. He masterly and gingerly writes in Spanglish, and if language is the order of thought, his melding punches holes in the borders of the two that just flow.

So worth the read and so instructive for me. It's a standout amidst the cliché. It is shadowy and haunting, but I shall not forget its voice nor images any time soon. Something I from my social location should not do.

I RECOMMEND this book.

Guillotine is an outstanding collection. These poems ache with want and are haunted by memories (of the AIDS crisis, past loves, migration). Corral's imagery is particularly strong; its surprising and inventive ("a sky Walmart blue"). This collection is also deeply reflective. So much so that the act of reflecting, both mentally and looking in a mirror, are central themes to many poems.

Absolutely beautiful writing and an incredible voice. An important collection to add to a library (public, private, college).

A rush. Graudual, until the feeling of it has all but consumed your senses. That is Guillotine. A collection of sharp, brutal, and often melancholy poems. However, each one bares the truth of Eduardo's soul, his heart, his anguish, and often left me reeling upon completion. This is an excellent collection, one the explores immigration, gay yearning, love, and loss. A great follow up to Slow Lightning.

My favorite from the collection would have to be "Questions for My Body". It is a stunning piece.

A luminous portrayal of heritage, language and abuse. The author tackles very difficult issues in a cutting way, similar to the razor mentioned in the poem “Guillotine.” A must-read collection.

In this collection, you'll find wedding dresses, blood, rosaries, scorpions. You'll find lines that will make you wince in pain and lines you'll want to tattoo across your flesh. His imagery is so vivid that you'll see the shades of green from his poems announce themselves in the physical space you inhabit with a new vibrance.

Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending a reading of Corral's at a bar in Raleigh during SparkCon and I got so sucked in I forgot to drink my beer before it went warm. Experiencing his work on the page brings about a similar all-consuming pleasure. It's one I hope you experience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for an e-arc for review. Thanks to Corral again for blessing us with his immense skill.

This is a marvelous collection of poetry. Blending different voices of all different opinions, Corral captures the harsh realities of immigration in the United States. Each stand out as distinct while coming together to form a larger narrative, connected by recurring images and motifs. Themes of desire, shame, body image, queerness, and race/ethnicity/nationality are fully fleshed out and explored through a variety of lenses, inviting the reader to examine situations from multiple perspectives. Some perspectives put forward, like that of a Border Patrol Agent or a coyote, invite the reader to sit in the uncomfortability the pieces have created and examine the complex web of incentives and consequences faced by the individuals who facilitate, legislate, or participate in undocumented immigration in the United States.

Corral's newest collection is hyper-focused on the story of immigration, particularly the horrors of trying to cross into the United States from the south. The poems are rarely overtly polemic, showing readers the horrors of the crossing itself rather than telling readers what they should think about immigration into the US. These very horrors beg readers to understand what immigrants are willing to endure for the promise of America, even the America of 2020.

The personas and tones of the poems vary, showing different aspects of the experience, but the horror is nonstop. As far as form, there are several nonce forms in used that repeat. I didn't notice any traditional forms, though I'm not versed in LatinX forms of poetry, so there could be some there. There were a few instances of overlapping text, more like word-collage, which are still readable and give a sense of pressure and confined energy. The use of Spanish works very well even for non-Spanish speakers. Mostly. There are a few instances that are fully in Spanish, making them unreadable without Google Translate (which will, of course, not be fully accurate and lose the poetics). But these instances are so few, they don't hold the book back, and perhaps their inaccessibility is purposeful.

The collection is powerful, no doubt. It captures a slice of the immigrant experience, never overstating itself or asserting that it is more than it is. Definitely worth a read.