YOU

“I rose from sleep one night, my back a trouble tense, and rode in reverse / from the idiopathic to what I believed were the glories // each scene an indulgence of a body I possessed,” writes Rosa Alcalá in “How It Started, How It’s Going {An Introduction},” the opening poem of her fourth collection, YOU. The poem, like many in this book, examines, from a retrospective lens, the myriad past selves of the speaker:

One was carried above other bodies, hovered over them, was weightless.

Another threaded itself, a quarter of two couples, in intricate maneuvers.
Switched dance partners easily.

Or stumbled with a stranger to his place.             I watched over her
waited for the sun to come up

This poem also functions as an ars poetica, addressing Alcalá’s unusual choice of the second-person address:

And how do you untangle from the telling the speaker’s motives?

Isn’t the second person a form of hiding? Why not just use the I?

The unreliability of memory is a running theme in this book, even as the speaker recognizes that putting memories into words is what allows her to connect with the different parts of herself (woman, daughter, mother): “To witness my body as a / distant thing that gathers itself over time to become whole.”

In Alcalá’s poems, “you” serves as a safeguard that creates distance between the speaker and her past feelings of worry, shame, fear, and sadness, while drawing the reader into an intimate conversation. “You” is also where the speaker’s various “selves” intersect, a space where she can address herself without judgment:

You wore cutoff jeans, Pumas,and a faux football jersey so tight your friends laughed and called youJugs when you wore it.

YOU is a powerful collection that validates past experiences as necessary for growth, and that celebrates the many versions of a self with honesty, humor, and openness.