"In order to speak, to loosen his lyrical jaw in this marvelous debut, Albert Abonado invokes a mandibular menagerie to say what the human family might otherwise leave unsaid. This is a totemic book, animal guides appearing when needed in the most ordinary spaces touched by trauma and the surreal, the DNA of our post-racial legacies rearranged to accommodate what is both funny and uncanny to the bone."

--Timothy Liu

"Through these witty, honest poems, Albert Abonado explores the narratives of self. Abonado's poetics reveal the self as a spark, then a 'ghost of another/ghost, ' then the clapping of hands, a winged thing, someone in a bear suit, kiss me, we're made entirely of rivers. There's so much music, heart, and joy in JAW. When you read it, you will feel a factory of delight open up inside you and say hello."

-Noah Falck