The Only Worlds We Know by Michael Lee

Michael Lee’s second book of poetry, but first full-length text, The Only Worlds We Know, does not disappoint. If you are a fan of his spoken word artistry, you will love a plethora of poems in this longer book. As a huge fan of Lee and his work for many years, I read this with a loving bias, sometimes reading the poem in his voice and other times my own. Though, I also have the audiobook version of The Only Worlds We Know, which is entirely read by Michael Lee. It is lovely and haunting in a different way than the text.

True to his style, Lee’s poems can rattle your bones merely with words. From “The Pill”:

The pill a solar system
in the dead man’s eye. The pill
a white shadow dragging night
behind it.

From “Look”:

Eventually, everything that can look will look
away, and our memory, which is a kind of faith,
will be unable to carry even itself.

With experimentation with erasure poetry as a multi-poem series scattered throughout the book, you can see Lee’s growth as a poet. He also plays with white space on the page: “The Study of Doors and Knowing” includes an entire page that engages tension with white space and mere dots. Lee shows that poetry extends beyond words to the words left unsaid.

Michael Lee is known for writing about his previous addictions, mental health, and the premature death of his childhood best friend. Somewhere in these pages is comfort for human pain and the need for guidance. It is beautiful and painful and hopeful.

Find The Only Worlds We Know here!

Depression & Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim

Sabrina Benaim’s debut Depression & Other Magic Tricks is a phenomenal punch in the gut that I masochistically want to read again and again. Other than the catchy and paradoxical title, I was enraptured by her explosive presence on Button Poetry’s YouTube channel. Her poetry is even more powerful on the page.

In “explaining depression to my mother: a conversation,” Sabrina explains depression and anxiety in a way that will have many who suffer from these ailments saying, “YES!” With passages, such as:

my depression in a shape shifter;
one day it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear,
the next, it’s the bear.
those days i play dead until the bear leaves me alone.

This is me. This is my depression: a firefly and a bear, and me in the middle of all that shape shifting. For me, I need poetry like Sabrina’s to reach me in solidarity and comfort, especially when I’m in my worst moments. It soothes me like a blanket in the wintertime.

However, Sabrina also has poems that uplifts, such as her poems to her muse, Beyoncé! Who doesn’t love poetry about Queen B? In this way, Sabrina is able to latch onto a larger audience, to be more accessible to a mainstream market, in order to sway readers with her magic tricks toward the heavier topics of depression and what goes on in the mechanisms of her mind and possibly the reader’s.

A throughline of poems are Sabrina’s magic trick poems, such as my favorite “magic trick 002”:

she willingly thrusts her body onto the hook
all for a better look at the stars.

Sabrina’s honesty is beautiful, as is her language in metaphor and scene. I find myself sighing over and over again at many of her lines that make me feel lost at sea yet also at home.

Find Depression & Other Magic Tricks here.