Watercolors in the Desk Drawer

In Georgette Unis' Watercolors in a Desk Drawer the world is rendered in intricate detail, lush as the pigments on an artist's palette. Family, nature, politics, and art, circumscribe the arc of a life where "time bends / the chronometer" and "leaves do not grow / in the winter soil of philosophies / but rather along the arteries / of unfortunates." Whether tracking an ancestral immigrant childhood or the results of the most recent election, Unis is attuned to the shifting world, where memories pulled from the desk drawer of recollection reinvent and reinvigorate the landscape.

-Cati Porter, The Body at a Loss, poet, editor and director of Inlandia Institute




Georgette Unis paints her poems on a canvas of family, using a palette of heritage, grief, and love. Absorb the grit of your ancestors from patterns on your plate. Her poems lead us through a choreography of storms and drought, take delight in quiet moments, but are still impatient for rain. They ask, How else are we to manage this desert...? and offer an uneasy solace, You are water. I drink quickly. Unis guides us to spaces made tender by pain and devotion, presented carefully, with layers of tissue in between.

-Cindy Bousquet Harris, poet, editor of Spirit Fire Review