Early Praise for Night of the Fire

“I still feel its detail dented in the flesh,” writes Ali C in ‘Embalm,’ “like a fish thrashing on land, its conspicuous / black eye shining...” Like this conjured fish, Night of the Fire jolts, thrashes, and writhes toward and away from violence, embodying a poetics of horror that is riven, also, with desire —a desire for mercy, for justice, for life. These poems concern the body, while also conveying the estrangements of self from self in the wake of traumas; these haunting and haunted poems leave their startling, palpable dents on the heart.”
—Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat

“If you want poetry that lingers long after the last page is turned, this chapbook is for you. Fierce and deeply intimate, these poems unravel the threads of violence, longing and trauma with aching vulnerability and unflinching honesty. “I have wanted to be a beautiful thing for all my life,” writes Ali C. These pages are a reclamation of self, of country, and of one's story, even as it writes of “lovers and homes as if they are strangers.” This is poetry that dares, and I am grateful to have read this beautiful work.”
—Noor Hindi, author of Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow.

“Somebody told me grief is the door / and not the room,” writes Ali C in ‘Gentlest of Bleeding Things.’ If grief is the door, Night of the Fire is the room, and I am so grateful Ali has let us in. His poems are deft and unyielding in their examination of bodily and cultural trauma, prompting readers to consider and reconsider questions of individual and collective power, disaster, and complicity. This collection underscores the asymptotic nature of grief and survivorship: however close you feel to your old self, the old world, it is impossible to touch, and a new world must be fashioned from the ashes. In this respect, Night of the Fire is unapologetic—Ali parses the alienation inherent to survivorship, sitting with and interrogating the agony of aftermath. Reading these poems feels like keeping my hand on a white-hot stove. It is a privilege to be living and writing at the same time as Ali C—I look forward to reading more of his work.”
—Maria Gray, author of Universal Red

“I think I'm so afraid of being haunted, I do not wish to be possessed by ghosts again,” Ali C writes in ‘High School Saints and Martyrs.’ In this stunning debut, Ali explores how trauma, grief, and longing make and unmake a body. With aching precision, these disquieting poems lay bare all the ways the body keeps count, the power it has to write and rewrite the self as it is both inhabited by the ghosts of memory and claims space in the aftermath of trauma. Night of the Fire conjures and culls. It haunts.”
—Ja’net Danielo, author of This Body I Have Tried to Write

“The poems in Night of the Fire are woven from “crimson grief,” “cruel blue irises,” knives, hearts, rain, balloons, and schools of fish. “I winnowed my heart slightly and you plunged your fist, whole, into the cushioned red,” says Penelope to Odysseus in one poem, “I should’ve known love is cut from the fabric of conflict.” Ali C tackles trauma and desire with bold images and inventive language, interrogating what it means to be a confessional poet and a young queer person in an era of genocide. “Honeycombed with orange,” Night of the Fire invites readers into its blaze.”
—Reuben Gelley Newman, author of Feedback Harmonies

“Night of the Fire is a dialogue with violence that Ali C is demanding your attention for and is well deserving of. In these poems, the real, the imaginary, and time are used to settle—and unsettle—the reader. “Forgive me, the world ignores murder / because the blood is on the dead instead of our palms. / Forgive me, puppeteer, I’m only miming a body. / I have not existed in one for a long time.” Even if the speaker of ‘The Ventriloquist’ is correct, Ali C is working in the tradition of Denise Levertov, Carolyn Forché, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Fady Joudah where the act of witnessing and naming is not just a ritual, it is a lyrical and stunning invocation.”
—Jane Feinsod, poet

Everything comes to light in Night of the Fire: grief stripped and searing, self-extracted and cradled with blood-stained hands. “Forgive me, I was at the bottom of the ocean / when God introduced light to the world on the first day,” Ali C writes. These poems ask you to stay no matter how much your hands are shaking, to breathe through the brutal tenderness massaged around each page. Here poetry becomes the body, engorged by both past and present to emerge eldritch, bare-footed, and anything but afraid.
—Elena Sichrovsky, author of Eating Out Anne Sexton