Mesquite Manual $7
38 pages. 2015, NDR.

Winner of the 2014–2015 NDR Chapbook Contest judged by Michael Martone, Mesquite Manual, by Leslie Marie Aguilar is a stunning 38 pages of desert-bound, visionary poetry. Of it, Catherine Bowman said, “Like Dante’s Inferno, Mesquite Manual is a lyric guidebook through the often hellish landscapes of a mythologized Texas; a landscape where we encounter wildfire and fire ants, rituals of abuse and condemnation, horned grinning jackalopes, tumbleweed rosaries, sugar skulls, pecan trees, chain links and scorpions in ecstatic embrace. These visionary poems douse and drench the skeletal plains with rich, powerful imagery and superb language, until they are alive, conjuring up possibilities for remaking the past, present  and future—without borders—with love and healing.” OUT OF PRINT