Between the Spine: A Collection of Erotic Love Poems

"Adrian Ernesto Cepeda paints a rich portrait and mood with his book, Between the Spine, captured in the lines "without uttering/a single spoken word." I love the intersection of speech, desire, passion, and love, and how all of these things that make us human are being explored so honestly and raw: "How I miss the meeting/of our most secret tongues." Cepeda is both tender and observant, often allowing the speaker to write of vulnerability and love, and having a person to love, and the fragility and stability of that. We take love for granted, but what happens in those silent, unspoken moments where our bodies crave another? How do we honor something so beautiful and out of our control? "Our bodies awake" is the most real line I've read in a long time." —Joanna C. Valente, author of Marys of the Sea and editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault