The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones

Moving from the global to the personal, noted feminist, social activist, and author of more than 100 books, Randall (Che on My Mind) presents poems of witness in which she becomes the proverbial "canary in the mine," offering warning and wisdom. These are poems of a broken world, poems of greed and evil, words strewn with the bones of those who have gone before. Perhaps it is in these penned bones—broken but somehow converging—that Randall's rhizome develops: "…feeling its way/ choosing where it will wake and rise…." Filled with imagery and descriptions of artifacts from myth to Mayans and the Manhattan High Line in New York City, Randall's poetry dissolves and connects recent and ancient histories—"Time disappears./ Something amorphous/ takes its place/ and only gratitude remains." The nature of a rhizome is that it burrows and moves underground, finding ways to grow anew. Instead of a "single terror mov[ing]" below ground, perhaps it is the nature of Randall's rhizomes to offer hope. "Open yourself to time/ in every direction./ Welcome a new home."