Battalion Shaped Girl

“Who but an oracle ought to become in our present battlefields of embargoed being and (un)sanctioned brutality? Who but an oracle of riotous sense and ecstatic vision could so incisively depict ‘desire’s exit / wound’ and ‘futures refracting in the rip.’ Temperance Aghamohammadi’s Battalion Shaped Girl is a rhapsodic, occult debut.” - Aditi Machado, author of Material Witness

“Temperance Aghamohammadi writes poems that are at once feats of language sharpened to its utmost point and spells that can transform our sense of the world. How we move through her lines—stopping at unusual points to consider meaning before it evolves into something else—becomes an example of how we might move through our days. While this book is written with a strong consciousness of how public and personal histories can be called forth to determine the present, the power of Battalion Shaped Girl is rooted in its maker’s resolve to ‘always. begin. / again.’ And there’s so much pleasure along the way! This is a magical, marvelous debut.” - Heather Christle, author of Paper Crown and In The Rhododendrons

“Part anthem, part Victorian rock ballad, these rhapsodic lyrics dazzle, documenting what it is like to be girl, doll, daughter, alive in times of atrocity in one’s homeland and one’s ancestral home. Forugh Farrokhzad lines the skeleton of this book, with traces of Lucie Brock-Broido’s numinous syntax lingering between the pages. ‘My life is happening again,’ the speaker says, and it is such voyeuristic luck to witness their life.” - Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Root Fracture