A Jehovah's Witness is stabbed in her home by a stranger she once allowed in. A homeless woman masturbates on a park bench. A statue of the Virgin Mary, "plaster receptacle of petitions and foolish pleas," is found in a dump, a missing hand suggesting the sound of a one-handed rosary.
Through images brutally honest and disarmingly off-center, Dixie Salazar explores the hidden lives of everyday people, objects, and experiences and their transformation in the hidden realms of the heart.Charting furious descents into the darkest crevices of our souls, Salazar paints for us a lost...

Duality is at the center of Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet, a striking collection of poems both intimate and grand. The poet, Dixie Salazar, has spent a lifetime forging her own identity out of two cultures: On one side was my father s world: Spanish speaking from las montanas. On the other side was my mother s world: a deep Southern drawl wafting from the magnolia and chinaberry trees. As her poems reveal, she is a product of both cultures but not completely at home in either one.
In the two sections of the book Inside and Outside parallelism and symmetry interact with themes both...