In The Eaters of Flowers, her third book of poems for Saddle Road Press, after the much-loved Blood Sugar Canto and Cuicacalli/House of Song, Ire'ne Lara Silva writes about the loss of her brother, her adopted son. In her unique canto style she sings the stunned, broken months following his death, navigating grief, loss, loneliness, and the remembrance of joy, as she begins to re-assemble her life.

Rooted in a Chicana/Latina/indigenous geographic and cultural sensibility, the stories of flesh to bone take on the force of myth, old and new, giving voice to those who experience the disruption and violence of the borderlands. In these nine tales, silva metes out a furious justice--a whirling, lyrical energy--that scatters the landscape with bones of transformation, reclamation, and healing.

...An original and authentic voice...with a unique vision. A blend of indigenismo and folktales retold in a modern vein...these stories come from the clouds, from spirits of ancient ancestors, from the oblique corners of the human consciousness...A new and engaging duende is born. -- Alejandro Murguia, author of This War Called Love

If Chagall had written, he would have painted words in the fierce brushstrokes of ire'ne lara silva's stories. If Remedios Varo had told stories, she would have wound the tendrils of her magic the way ire'ne lara silva paints her world. -- Cecile Pineda, author Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step

ire'ne lara silva writes about what's between dark shadow and daylight, when, as on the Day of the Dead, we are so aware of the sacred. Though fiction, ire'ne's prose seems to transform into chanting verse. -- Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning: Stories

In her brilliant fiction debut, flesh to bone, ire'ne lara silva uses hauntingly lyrical language to tell stories cast in the Latin American tradition of Juan Rulfo and Maria Luisa Bombal. But, do not mistake this work for magical realism. The fantastical elements, raw voices, and shifting realities inhabit an emotional, psychological, and all-too-physical landscape of loss and violence. Life-affirming and intense, the stories sweep us into another world where we come face to face with the deepest truths. Brava! -- Norma Cantú, author of Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera

Part song, part grito, part wail, part lullaby, and part hymn, Cuicacalli / House of Song is a multi-vocal exploration of time, place, and history.

Song lives within and without the poet's physical and spiritual experience of body, of desire, of art, of loss, and of grief on an individual and communal level.

Cuicacalli / House of Song sings survival, sings indigeneity, sings some part of the tattered world back together.

In homage to Gloria Anzaldúa and her iconic work Borderlands/La Frontera, award-winning poets ire'ne lara silva and Dan Vera have assembled the work of 54 writers who reflect on the complex terrain--the deeply felt psychic, social, and geopolitical borderlands--that Anzaldúa inhabited, theorized, explored, and invented.

Named for the Nahuatl word meaning their soul, Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands presents work that is sparked from the soul: the individual soul, the communal soul. These poets interrogate, complicate, and personalize the borderlands in transgressive and transformative ways, opening new paths and revisioning old ones for the next generation of spiritual, political, and cultural border crossers.

Within shifting borders-it is good to enter into these voice worlds-to stand, bow & listen in their presence. Peoples, familias, cities, towns, rancherías and the wilderness of all border-crossers & messengers of border spaces open in these pages. -From the Introduction by Juan Felipe Herrera, US Poet Laureate

Contributors include: Juan Felipe Herrera, Rodney Gomez, Daniel E. Solís y Martínez, Carmen Calatayud, ire'ne lara silva, Tara Betts, José Antonio Rodríguez, David Hatfield Sparks, Barbara Jane Reyes, Miguel M. Morales, Cecca Austin Ochoa, Cordelia Barrera, Oswaldo Vargas, Emmy Pérez, Dan Vera, Michael Wasson, Melanie Márquez Adams, Tomas Moniz, Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez, D.M. Chávez, Inés Hernández-Avila, Nidia Melissa Bautista, Nadine Saliba, Monica Palacios, Jennine DOC Wright, César L. De León, Nia Witherspoon, Joe Jiménez, Roy G. Guzmán, Veronica Sandoval, Juan Morales, Victor Payan, Abigail Carl-Klassen, Sarah A. Chavez, Rachel McKibbens, jo reyes-boitel, Adela Najarro, Elsie Rivas Gómez, Lupe Mendez, T. Sarmina, Shauna Osborn, Marie Varghese, Allen Baros, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ysabel Y. González, Minal Hajratwala, Karla Cordero, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Pablo Miguel Martínez, Barbara Brinson Curiel, Olga García Echeverría, Suzy de Jesus Huerta, David Bowles, John Fry, Kim Shuck