Saretta Morgan's Feeling Upon Arrival,
BY Despy Boutris

Ugly Duckling Presse published Saretta Morgan’s Feeling Upon Arrival in 2018, and I finally had the opportunity to read it last week. This slim chapbook—made up of only eighteen pages of text—reflects on the natural world and on desire with infinite tenderness. With only one or two sentences per page and generous white space, readers are impelled to focus in on the images—which makes each all the more impactful. Indeed, these fragments are strong, but they are also intimate, the plural “we” suggestive, in this case, of a romantic relationship. Morgan offers snapshots of this relationship. She writes:
 
            we craved sensuality and other expressions of coherence.
            good fucking. james brown. crumbs from breakfast toast.
 
and
 
            we spent days tracing shadows along our wrists and ankles
            and jaws.
 
This chapbook’s tender affection rendered me tongue-tied. If I had to come up with a criticism, it would be only that this publication is too short. Morgan’s poetic voice is gorgeous and I am greedy for more. ​⋆

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Saretta Morgan is a writer and artist. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University and contributes to the humanitarian aid efforts of No More Deaths Phoenix. She is the author of the chapbooks room for a counter interior and Feeling Upon Arrival. Morgan holds degrees in writing from Columbia University and Pratt Institute. Most recently she has received grants and fellowships from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is at work on Alt-Nature, her first full-length collection.

Despy Boutris's writing has been published or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she lives in California and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.