Hello, poetry lovers!
Fia Montero’s Everything but the Bones is a striking debut chapbook that feels both ephemeral and enduring — like breath fog on glass that somehow leaves a permanent mark. Published by the ever-intimate Seven Kitchens Press as part of the Allison Joseph Series (which champions emerging BIPOC voices), Montero’s collection fits seamlessly within the press’s ethos: spare, tender, and fiercely attuned to the body and its histories.
From the very first poem, Montero establishes a language of ache — but it’s not indulgent. There’s restraint here, a poet who knows when silence can speak louder than metaphor. The body, its limitations, memories, and silences are central, but so are hunger, longing, and the bone-deep ache for tenderness. As the title suggests, the speaker often seems to be navigating life stripped to their essential self — all nerves, no armor.
Montero’s lines are short, surgical, and intimate. A few poems read like confessionals written in moonlight — others like post-mortem reports of moments that broke something quietly inside the speaker. But what’s most affecting is how Everything but the Bones resists despair. Even in its starkest lines, there’s a pulse of resilience, a kind of emotional chiaroscuro: pain offset by wonder, grief held up against the glow of desire.
The standout poems — particularly one mid-chapbook piece that compares the body to a house haunted by both memory and mercy — deliver gut-punches with soft hands. Montero doesn’t ask for your sympathy; she demands your attention. Every word earns its place.
As with most Seven Kitchens publications, the chapbook feels lovingly made — from the tactile cover to the way the poems breathe on the page. And while its 21 pages fly by, the poems linger long after — ghosting the reader in the best possible way.
Verdict:
Everything but the Bones is a stunningly crafted meditation on embodiment, survival, and what’s left behind when language fails. Fia Montero is a voice to watch — not because she shouts, but because she whispers the kind of truth that cracks something open inside you.
Copies can be purchased at: https://sevenkitchens.blogspot.com/2025/07/fia-montero-everything-but-bones.html
Fia Montero Poetry 
Leave a comment