From unincorporated territory [åmot]

The fifth book in Chamorro poet Perez's series continues the poet's dive into Guamanian identity and culture. This installment takes its title from the native Chamorro word for "medicine," referring to the practices and vegetation used by traditional healers. Perez's characteristically inventive, visual arrangements on the page invigorate his already spellbinding subjects, which include concrete poems in the shape of the island nation("the first map tåta : dad / hangs in the hallway / 'where's our village' i ask") and another subsected into diamond-shaped fragments: "barb -ed wi -re // spr -eads // li -ke in // va -sive vi // nes." Perez serves up plentiful portions of Indigenous vocabulary, as found in "our words for rice" ("pugas : uncooked rice / hineksa' : cooked rice") and plays with the orientation of lines across the page (some run horizontally, others are upside-down), which requires readers to frequently reorient themselves in relation to the text. Detailed diagrams of plant species, historical maps of military installations and trade networks, and selective textual elements (bold, italics, and gray scale) emphasize additional dimensions. Perez's ongoing project is one of the longest-running and most rewarding literary engagements with Pacific Islander and Indigenous poetics of the twenty-first century.