Still Desert (Button Poetry)

This is a slim book of poetry by Daniel Elias Galicia. Galicia was a finalist for the 2023 Button Poetry prize and a Pushcart-nominated poet. In his debut book of poetry, the author explores the desert and the feelings it evokes in him. There are a variety of forms, lines, and shapes on these pages to underline the poem’s images. For example, the Teeter-Totter wall is in the shape of a teeter-totter. One striking poem has the border wall interrupting the ecology of plants, animals, and desert life.

Many of the poems have images of crossing that still desert and the suffering which ensues. The poet also has generational angst from the suffering of his father and his father’s people. The author is a son of Chicano activists who suffers from the intergenerational pain of the desert and river crossings and life in a new land that has yet to welcome them back.