Scorpion's Question Mark

A formally inventive debut collection of poetry driven by narrative and character. In this poetry collection, JD Debris focuses on characters who live on society s outskirts and demand greater visibility in the face of marginalization. At the book s heart are extended narrative elegies for two musicians. First, the poet follows Mexican singer and songwriter Chalino Sanchez as he avenges his sister s sexual assault, and then he turns to Gato Barbieri, an influential Argentine tenor saxophonist who is haunted by a shadowy man in dusk-colored glasses. As these musicians question their purpose, we as readers are invited to reflect on our lives, our legacies, and ourselves. The Scorpion s Question Mark is personal and mythological, representational and abstract. These formally inventive and metrically attuned poems compose a range of contrasts boxers Manny Pacquiao and Marvelous Marvin Hagler appear alongside Tupac and Herman Melville, and apparitions of the Virgin Mary manifest in both human and mirage-like forms on public beachfronts. Looking to the scorpion s tail that forms the shape of a question mark, Debris seeks to occupy uncertain space within the poems, bending forms to find both expansiveness and tension. The Scorpion s Question Mark was the winner of the 2022 Donald Justice Poetry Prize.