The Best Prey - Paperback

by Paige Quiñones (Author)

Paige Quiñones's incisive debut poetry collection investigates the trauma of desire. Quiñones's lyric world is populated with stark dualities: procreation and childlessness, predator and prey, mania and depression. A hunter pursues an ill-fated fox through the woods; heaven is paved with girls who would rather drown than be born; a couple returns from their honeymoon to find a stagnant pond in their marriage bed. Through navigating these duplicities, Quiñones arrives at a version of femininity that is at once fierce and crystalline, and unmistakably her own. She writes, "My reflection can only growl back, in water or oil-slick or silver. This is an exercise in forgiveness. I dip my feet in." The Best Prey charts the complexity of hunger in vivid, visceral terms, and ultimately arrives at a sense of self that encompasses the contradictions of sensuality, violence, and power.

Author Biography

Paige Quiñones has received awards and fellowships from the Center for Mexican-American Studies, the Academy of American Poets, and Inprint Houston. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Juked, Lambda Literary, Orion Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University and is currently a PhD student in poetry at the University of Houston.