Poet, playwright, and performance artist Lenelle Moïse has been dropping jaws throughout the country and beyond for years now, and thanks to the City Lights/Sister Spit imprint, her much-anticipated debut collection of poems, Haiti Glass, carries that passion onto the page. Many of the poems deal directly with Moïse’s experience growing up as a Haitian immigrant. Her descriptions are palpable; she writes of “eating salty cakes made of clay,” becoming a horse to a drumbeat, and hearing the sounds of trumpets and stomach grumbles. The writing is grounded in self but takes flight in emotion, and the descriptions, vivid as they are, feel undeniably universal.
— Evan Karp