Sister Urn

Author: Andrea Rexilius 

Publisher: Sidebrow Books (2015)

Sister Urn is a requiem both intimate and broad in scale, memorializing the life of a sister cut short and the unraveling aftereffects of the anthropocene, "difficult to pin down in objects, and therefore unnamable." Here, poetry is an act not only of holding space for grief but also for restitching what has split or frayed into a raw-edged resolution: "When the future is missing, I will reside in the letter I. I will abide by it, even if it topples over."

"Andrea Rexilius' brilliant Sister Urn presses us against the afterlife, and, in radiant revelations, achieves, as if in living diorama, the body as an epistle of love."

–J. Michael Martinez

"Rexilius leads us into that hemisphere long darkened by despair while holding the small illuminations of this music: 'We blank our voices / going forward into the night. Uvula as lantern.'''

–Carolina Ebeid