Wow! I talk alot about nipples in this post

        Beast Meridian is a constellation of memories. In An Illness of Pines and A halo of beasts, Villarreal takes us through moments of painful memories of her parents, queer love desire, the ancestral self and a home where “something is wrong with the soil.”

        One of my favorite poems is on on page 36, Vanessa describes going to school and living in a town where she should “know her place” based on the color or skin and class. Or as she puts it “before school, scrub the dark off your nipples.” I love this line and the imagery of how certain people (racist) can dominate a whole narrative not the majority of a town/city but of the self i.e.the speaker. She speaks of wanting to scrub the dark of her nipples off and looking the other girls in the locker room with “white girl nipples soft and pink.” I always find this fascinating about women of color, how we are taught to be ashamed of the fact that many of us do not have tiny pink nipples. For many cis gendered white men on television the object of their affection was always tiny pink nipples which I thought was weird because I absolutely do not have that. It taught what Villarreal calls “erotic shame” or even body shame. But as I grew older, and noticed women of color reclaiming their bodies, making art of WOC bodies and showing body positivity toward WOC bodies made me so proud of my own big, dark nipples so when Vanessa wrote about it in this poem it stood out to me and the image of her trying to scrub off her nipples trying to make them not look like brown girls nipples. At the same time it is relatable because there are moments where body shame makes us realize how different our bodies are and what we see in front of us, the tv or magazines where the “desired” body is usually a cis gendered white women’s body because anything else would be considered “beastily”.

        Other moments and poems that stood out to me were the love she has for the female ancestral self “I do this all para mi mamá, mi abuelita, mi hermano. For all of our second chances. We escaped him. And him. I will never throw that away. I only use revlon. It’s the best. You see this eyeshadow. Wintercloud.” And “to gaze upon suffering is to shatter the heart & devastate the mind.” As Layli Longsoldier says, poets are people who are translators of feeling.  And that is exactly what Vanessa does, She translates all the of the experiences and feelings of suffering of her family and self and translates it so beautifully on paper that it can be an overwhelming first read but it is a read we can go back to again and again.