In Morocco: رحلة امرأة أمريكية by Ellen Hernandez

In Morocco is a book full of precisely the kind of “small blessings” it describes. “A small, white flower grow(ing)/in mud,” “choruses of chaffinches,” an “oleander-painted road”—all join to recreate the “giddy hum” still throbbing in the mind of the traveler months after her return. The poems “flow in and out of languages” and locales alike, moving as easily as the breeze they continually evoke among vivid scenes of city and village life. From “succulent fig” and “not-quite-ripe avocado” to “sticky-sweet date” and “harissa-spiced olive,” again and again, Hernandez sets us so rich and distinct a feast that we, too, get to “eat like a local.” 

–Keith O’Shaughnessy, author of three chapbooks and the full-length book of poetry, INCOMMUNICADO.