'The Cartography of Sleep' by Laura Villareal

"When I disappear, I only leave teeth
marks. I can hear whimpers
& howls in the distance."

Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships Key West Literary Seminar and The Highlights Foundation. More of her writing can be found at: www.lauravillareal.com

[ cover art by Letícia Bmi ]​
[ limited edition print run of 125 copies ]

Villareal positions herself the cartographer in this short and poignant collection of poems. With each page she pushes her text to transform and so we encounter the map as text for guidance, map as data, map as myth. Each bit of movement expands the landscape Villareal’s poems define and, in doing so, charts wider territory for the reader to move into. I’m saying, with The Cartography of Sleep I stepped into a series of bound pages and stepped out into an expanse. How grateful I am for it.
–JR Mahung, Since When He Have Wings (Pizza Pi Press)

Laura Villareal's The Cartography of Sleep is a sublime map of dreams and a guide to the heart's darkness. Finding your way in her poetry is no easy journey. Villareal offers her readers new mythologies and seasons. The turns are sometimes bloody, sometimes funny, sometimes wild, sometimes surreal, but all the time enlightening. Make no mistake, these poems bite back, sweetly, vengefully, and with grace. Or put simply, these poems are dangerous.
–Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Poets)