Mouthy is a fiercely intimate poetry collection about reclaiming a voice after years of being taught to shrink. Kabal writes from the layered experience of being Black, queer, femme, soft, and often misread, moving through childhood silencing, small-town memory, relationship grief, apology, tenderness, embodiment, and finally a kind of earned peace. The book begins with the declaration that “mouthy” is not an insult but a ministry, then follows that idea through poems, prose passages, and reflective prompts that turn survival into language. It’s not only about speaking louder. It’s about learning when silence was imposed, when softness became armor, and when the self finally stopped asking permission to exist.

“The Day I Learned Silence Had Rules” stayed with me because it gives the whole collection a childhood wound to orbit: the classroom, the dry-erase markers, the teacher’s gentle but devastating “That’s enough.” That moment explains so much of the book’s emotional weather. The later prose piece about returning to the small town deepens that wound rather than simply repeating it. I loved the restraint there, especially the realization that going back wasn’t about confrontation but retrieval. The writing is at its best when it trusts detail, when it lets a parking lot, a hallway, a tightened shoulder, or a remembered bathroom carry the ache. Those passages feel lived in. They have pulse and dust on them.

The poems themselves have a liturgical quality, almost like affirmations sharpened into verse. I admired the insistence of the voice, the way certain phrases return like drums: silence was not safety, softness is not weakness, love that requires shrinking is not love. At times, that repetition is powerful, even necessary. It makes the book feel like a ritual of re-naming. Some ideas circle back, but even then, I understood the emotional logic of the repetition. This is a book about unlearning, and unlearning rarely happens in a single clean sentence. It takes rehearsal. It takes return.

What moved me most is that Mouthy doesn’t mistake volume for healing. By the end, the book has traveled toward something gentler and more complex: the mouth can rest, the body can be trusted, the old self can visit without steering. That final movement, from defiance into blessing, gives the collection its tenderness. I’d recommend this book to readers who love confessional poetry, self-reclamation, queer testimony, and writing that feels part poem, part prayer, part journal held open under warm light. It will speak most deeply to anyone who has ever been called too much when they were really just becoming whole.

Pages: 126 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0GLQW8T3W