My Man, Esperanza
Cintrón
Seven Kitchens Press, 2026
Think Franny Brice. Think Billie Holiday. Feel sonic brilliance. My Man scores “lyrics that elevate her man’s [every brother’s] ordinariness.” Cintrón’s celebrates Detroit’s Black, Brown and working-class men “who sacrificed for our right to learn, to think and speak freely, to create, to be.” This powerful chapbook is vital reading in 2026.
The poem “Prodigy” praises Leroy Hyter and musicians like him who can “glide and prance/ over the keys / all sass and fineness.” I could say that about Cintrón’s lyricism. She has sweet finesse. “Icicles and hot pokers / skip down my spine” whether she’s writing a fiery short-lined poem or a luxurious sultry one.
The sensuous speaker in the title poem, “My Man,” coaxes a lover to remembers how to be vulnerable.
“… I call him baby cuz it
reminds him to be gentle to recall
how it was before he was forced
to walk point before the barbs
and spikes penetrated his shield
lashed his soul and left him wary
before he learned that tenderness
was a weakness I call him baby....”
The poet traces her musical roots back to her father’s “short-lived record store” in Detroit’s Spanish speaking Southwest side. His 78s gave boleros, rumbas and mambos. When her father returned to Puerto Rico, her mother moved her to the Westside “that had just opened up to Black folks because of ‘white flight.’” There, Esperanza learned poetics from divas Ruth Brown, Etta James and Dinah Washington. Her teenage aunts “tuned transistor radios up to maximum” so the whole house could sing with Dionne Warwick, Mary Wells and Aretha.
I read My Man aloud to feel words dance on my tongue. I plan to memorize “Poets.”
“I know some / who work / in civil service/
on the line at Fords’s / in diner’s flipping burgers /
or doing time in dank cells / men who juggle words /
like marbles in their mouths / as they slip tickets /
under windshields / or press plates for the state… .”
Cintrón’s keen eye sees human hunger. In “What the Mugger Looked Like,” the brother who “wore a T-shirt / state mascot dead center and/ is jaw was an unmarred plane / fresh like sister’s linebacker boyfriend” is in need as much as the one “with the Nike hoodie… / full petulant lips … / and sighed mournfully / like a destitute Bryon.”
Those who know Esperanza Cintrón’s work know her intense love of Detroit is astute. You get a deep portrait of the city if you read her oeuvre: Chocolate City Latina, Visions of a Post-Apocalyptic Sunrise: Detroit Poems and Boulders, Detroit Nature Poems. Shades, Detroit Love Stories, published by Wayne State University Press, was a Michigan Notable Book in 2020. What Keeps Me Sane won the Naomi Long Madgett Award.
Not all poems in this book happen in Detroit. “Quiet Violence” could happen anywhere, as the speaker of the poem is pulled over by a cop because of her locks. The speaker “holds it in” with the officer, but readers hear her cradle with care “the legions / of men and boys / who have gone down / for less.”
“La Dulzura,” a joyous piece, unfolds in Loiza, Puerto Rico, after father has died. The sweetness of her abuelita singing a “tender bolero” enters the poem’s reverie as her last living tio chews the tip of a sugar cane stalk. Memory and music layer themselves into an ancestral celebration.
In “It Feels Good,” my body tenses then embraces the wife who takes a lover to stave off earthquakes, toxic air, melting ice caps, human extinction, and her husband’s revenge. The poet plays with spacing, cushioning readers as they acknowledge: yes, “our world will explode” and yes, pleasure makes room for “tomorrow.”
Esperanza Cintrón’s grace is infused with a fierce understanding of struggle-- race and class. Her wisdom is born of protest, of “primordial knowledge.” When she holds herself, her brothers and her readers accountable, she does so with generosity. Reading My Man makes me move through my town with more empathy for the men who inhabit.
My Man is part of the A. V Christie Series of Seven Kitchen Press based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The beautiful cover art, Soul Mate, is by Larry Green.
Lori Anderson Moseman’s recent work
is the chapbook Whittle Gristle from
above/ground press (2025). Quietly
Between, a 2022 poetry/photography collaboration, is available from A
Viewing Space. Okay and Too Few Words were above/ground press
chapbooks in 2023. Her experimental poetry collections include Darn (Delete Press, 2021) and Y (Operating System, 2019). For her
earlier prose poems see Full Quiver
(Propolis Press, 2015) and Flash Mob
(Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). For samples of those books and her archive, see https://loriandersonmoseman.com. She lives in Eugene OR.
