Sarah Cortez

Along Texas roadways rest thousands of contemplative shrines, usually marked by small, white metal crosses. Anchored by the stunning photography of roadside memorials by Dan Streck, this landmark book allows four poets to respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity and eloquent ekphrasis: Larry D. Thomas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons brings her award-winning skills to perfectly meld photography with poetry in this gorgeous volume. A Plain, White Cross It lists slightly beside the highway. Whoever placed it there drove its upright deep into the earth, intimate with the tragedy of wind and driving rain. Knowing the certainty of erasure, they left it nameless, just a simple wooden cross harboring, for a while, the traces of unbearable loss. As if lit from within with white light, it glows beside the silent highway: white light stark as the grief of the bereaved, white as the clouds above, streaking, disintegrating. Larry D. Thomas

The poems of Sarah Cortez flex lean muscles to build lyric intensity and a gripping edginess often backlit by an incandescent, controlled eroticism. Cortez reveals the hidden underworld of her fellow police officers, whose lives comprise the thin blue line and whose blood sometimes splashes and blackens on summer concrete.

Along Texas roadways rest thousands of contemplative shrines, usually marked by small, white metal crosses. Largely a phenomenon of the Texas culture, these storied memorials are invitations to pause, to pay att ention, to ponder the meaning of life and death. Anchored by the stunning photography of roadside memorials by Dan Streck, this landmark book allows four poets to respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity and eloquent ekphrasis: Larry D. Th omas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons brings her award-winning skills to perfectly meld photography with poetry in this gorgeous volume.

This ground-breaking, mixed genre memoir journeys from the soil of Texas farmland near Floresville to the shrimpers’ nets of the Gulf Coast, near Matagorda. Three generations of Hispanic families are viewed through the faith-filled lens of the miraculous and the poignancy of dreams never realized. The journey continues to mid-twentieth century Houston, where what is done is as powerful as that which never happened.

Poems included in the collection have been awarded the PEN Texas Literary Award. A debut collection of erotic poetry that will appeal to both men and women. Contains an introduction by poet Naomi Shihab Nye. "Sarah Cortez brings a secret world into poetry, and her crafty first book - nervy, quick-hitting, street-smart, sexual - - leaves each of us more startlingly aware of what we had overlooked, more keenly observant and acutely conscious." - Poet Edward Hirsch "Her sassy debut of mostly first-person poems comes to us from the unique perspective of a female officer: drawing deeply on her experiences as a deputy constable in Houston's Harris County, as well as her Mexican American roots, Cortez writes convincingly on the charged topics of lust, fear, and home." - Kirkus Reviews "Searing. Sexy. Stunning. Blunt. Sarah Cortez writes poems amazing in their life-force. Prepare to be startled." -Poet and anthologist Naomi Shihab Nye "In this, her first collection of poems, Sarah Cortez has already found her voice and her subjects. The voice is brash and powerful and holds nothing back; and the poet commits herself wholeheartedly to depicting the joys of physical love and the risks of a dangerous profession. Cortez is unique: she leaves the reader with the tastes of both lipstick and metal in his mouth." - Poet Robert Phillips (Breakdown Lane and other works) Author Bio: SARAH CORTEZ holds degrees from Rice University, the University of Texas-Austin, and the University of Houston. Her work has previously appeared in literary magazines, anthologies, and chapbooks. How to Undress a Cop is her first collection of poetry.