Florida Water by aja monet – a book review

Imma Read – Reviews by Mahogany L. Browne

aja monet’s newest book of poems, Florida Water, is not just a book but a bruise you press to feel alive again. Florida Water lingers in the mouth like a metal prayer. These are not poems you read—they read you, strip you down to bone memory, and make you name what you tried to forget. Monet doesn’t write to heal, she writes to haunt. Each stanza arrives as ritual, smoke, salt, a breaking open; this is not gentle work but a lyrical invocation with the power to cleanse, conjure, and reckon.

aja monet scrapes and drags grief into the daylight, where she uses language as altar. Florida Water is a spiritual offering that echoes the ancestral uses of the substance as a symbol of healing or protection. She reclaims the sacred from the sterilized, her verse is all pulse and reckoning. These poems be both tender and unflinching, be inherited trauma, be journeying love, be rage reset, and be liberation spirit work. These poems are rooted in the tradition of Black womanist poetics; therefore, they got the audacity to remember, protest, and soothe. If we are honest global citizens, we know that pain can be architecture. Consequently, Florida Water is a surrealist poet’s demolition gift.

This book is to be read aloud, poured over, and returned to whenever the soul needs ceremony.

Check out aja monet & Edwidge Danticat in converation tonight! At Isola Brooklyn with introduction and moderation by Mahogany L. Browne. A couple of tickets left! See you soon!