My Kill Adore Him

Book excerpt: My Kill Adore Him is a collection of poems from Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize-winner Paul Martínez Pompa. With a unique, independent voice, Martínez Pompa interrogates masculinity, race, language, consumerism, and cultural identity in poems that honor los olvidados, the forgotten ones, who range from the usual suspects brutalized by police to factory workers poisoned by their environment, from the victim of a homophobic beating in the boys’ bathroom to the body of Juan Doe at the Cook County Coroner’s Office. Some of the poems rely on somber, at times brutal, imagery to articulate a political stance while others use sarcasm and irony to deconstruct political stances themselves.