water is never still

In this hybrid poetic sequence, water is never still, JoAnna Scandiffio narrates the mind of a young girl who grapples with her mother's sudden death, asking, "Do the dead come back like horse flies?" Her grief is jumbled like a sailor's tale as she seeks to reconcile what she learns in school with her grandmother's version of history, her brother's waywardness, and her father's sadness. She questions if Montezuma gave away his kingdom to Cortez, if a sailor's tattoo of a blue forest can save him, and if her grandmother saw Cortez through a shuttered door. As she processes her loss, she learns how to steal lipstick, cake recipes, discovers how 'boys whistle at what they fear,' and "if you marry an Aztec you inherit sky and earth air comes from laughter fire from falling."