This poem along with many others celebrating both the simple and complex nature of Black Joy can be found in this wonderful anthology, Black Joy Unbound, published by BLF Press and can be purchased at
So honored to have my work published in this wonderful literary magazine, The AutoEthnographer. These three poem along with a microessay appeared in the Nov. 10 Issue of Bodily Autonomy. #BodilyAutonomy #RoeVWade #USSupremeCourt
Currently in presales at Finishing Line Press! Will ship on March 31, 2023! Get ready to feel “The Fire!”
From Finishing Line Press:
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The Firetalker’s Daughter honors the power of mother’s love and tender teaching, the value of ancestral gifting and wisdom, the necessity of mourning for movement, and the audacity to hope and act for a more just future. Spun along a motif of fire, these poems carry searing incantations that evoke an awareness of the relevance of the literal, figurative, and spiritual fires that breathe down lines and throughout time.
From NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green and Award Winning Author Kai Coggin:
Spiritual incantation and unspoken ancestral magic singed and sparked my heart, as I moved through the language and gospel of Regina YC Garcia‘s debut collection The Firetalker’s Daughter. Charting a path through her lineage of healers and those who could “talk the fire” out of burns and wounds, the gift passed over her, she burns her own powerful impressions of Black Light onto the breaking world, like an ancestor alive and witnessing. “I cannot talk the fire / Yet, I am Fire… Truth / My ancient magic renders demons cold.” Garcia takes the reader into the depths of self, motherhood, social justice cries, the erasure of Black history by the fires of an all-consuming whiteness, mourning a lost daughter in Breonna Taylor, and yet, carrying an unwavering hope in “the rise of indomitable spirits from the embers.” The seeds of generations are scattered in these blazing words, torched open. These poems— a phoenix rising from, all around us, a world of ash.
–Kai Coggin, author of Mining for Stardust, Incandescent, and Wingspan
The Firetalker’s Daughter is an offering, incantation, and invocation that taps into the power physically or metaphorically of fire. Through expressions of the inner self, Regina YC Garcia’s poems tap into the questions of reconciling fearsome nature with goodness and peacefulness as seen through this divine elemental creation.
Scorching imagery and passion create wisps of smoke. Smoldering narratives become lightning bolts and poetic kindling igniting substantive undergrowth for a brighter day. The Firetalker’s Daughterinvites the blaze that always illuminates the before time of far tomorrows.
I am holding only a piece that is so much greater than I even know.
As he, she, it, they, I are in constant growth and creation until their time in this realm is spent, I will never know it all (as Breath itself creates anew around itself).
Depending on my state, I find this reality either excruciatingly binding or extraordinarily freeing.
Sometimes there is Peace in this knowledge of not knowing.