“Sometimes ferocious, and always ferociously honest, Ángel García’s poems address themselves to the cycle of violence that arises at the many borders, both enforced and inhabited, in the US-Latino experience: between macho stereotypes and sensuous masculinity, between painful alienation and penitent acceptance, and ultimately, between loss and love. Yet for all the bruised fists, black eyes, and broken jaws here, there are no victims in these harrowing poems, as they search not for blame, but for bravery — the courage to see oneself in the mirror, and recognize our universal humanity always hungrily staring back.” —Rafael Campo, author of Alternative Medicine “Teeth Never Sleep is an auspicious and daring debut by a poet whose attention to the line and the possibilities of well-crafted metaphors is remarkably accomplished. These are poems that appreciate that risk in poetry demands vulnerability, and the quest for truth requires a willingness to excavate the complexities of human emotion and thought. Garcia’s poems about masculinity, displacement, language and desire are powerful and deeply affecting.” —Kwame Dawes, author of City of Bones “How could there be tenderness, pleasure and myth, resurrection and even fur inside rivers — in brutality? This is the book that stands alone in its midnight boldness, its veined shadow secrets. One of the most difficult arts of the poem is to descend into its light-less under-realms, into what lies beneath the elegant surfaces — here Ángel examines our gendered, warring bodies, man, son, lover, husband, father, mother, ghost woman — our stripped down self unmasked, our garbled, foamed and delirious, lonesome acts — our “animalia.” Open this book if you dare. But it is not the animal smashed suddenly, torn away from its innocent gait (that García animates in various forms) that he is redeeming. In his hands, these pages, notice how Ángel García still cups an abandoned child-shaped flame, a night nation perhaps, breathes into it, regardless of its alarming fangs. This is a raw, unsutered, incredible collection. One of a kind — nose-breaking, heart devouring, blazing volume.” —Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the Unites States 2015-2017