Sundress Reads: Review of The Underdream

Aiyana Masla wrote her first full-length poetry collection, The Underdream (Conerstone Press, 2025), during and after her struggle with Tuberculosis, to which she almost lost her life. The Underdream is a precious celebration of the sort of triumph that settles into the bones, that is punctuated by lines like “I have to taste the ocean again, I still have to do/big more generous with joy”( Masla 26). And while The Underdream is a book of struggle, it is not a battle cry, it is not boastful.

The Underdream is a recommitment to a life, a life of miracles, such as “oranges in February…dipping my fingers into fleeting/ethereal honey” (Masla 27). Masla writes toward this dedication through quiet revelation and vivid imagery. In “Dew & Dirt” Masla writes,

“Every morning, so far, I am alive.

Every morning, as if out of a thicket

or fog, the world returns, slowly seeping;

wets my skin with color. Life rushes in.” (Masla 49)

Here, Masla invokes life, a life of bounty, and communion with loved ones, of time that is not measured with an unrelenting hand. Her poems often unfurl like spells with repeated lines: “I am not ready,” “I will not,” “I want one more” (Masla 26). She invokes a life heavy with fruit, flower, longing, and color; “marigold,” “husky purple,” “yellow shimmer,” “winded pink,” “spring cream lavendered” and “persimmon yawn” (Masla 19, 18, 33, 38, 64). Though what she speaks of is ordinary, the language she uses to conjure everyday color, the beauty of being with ones you love, of wishing for a body that is healthy and whole, drips with juice, with flower, with the glitter and grit of desire, giving each poem a sheen of mysticism and magic.

The Underdream is a book of quiet holiness, of soft glory, of embodied worship. Aiyana Masla moves into a place familial and liminal, touched by dream, honeyed by grief. Broken into three sections: Night, Between Rooms, and Thaw, The Underdream moves between hospital rooms and gardens. Masla takes her time in each place, her eyes trained to see the almost infinitesimal as valuable and worth noticing. In “Savored” she writes:

“Two blinking stars, tiny petals

small fires in the blackness

your toes, cold

your breath, butter in your mouth

the blossom, now crushed in your pocket

salty, a pollen stain you couldn’t see,

but smelt. Small ceremony

you almost didn’t stop for.” (Masla 19)

Masla’s book is full of such “small ceremonies,” the measuring of precious ritual, and reminds us of the art of living a life of careful attention and awe. In “Savored,” she writes of pulling over near an empty soccer field, the “pink day fading.” And it is in this simple moment of stillness that a ceremony of noticing occurs, a moment is transformed and marked, stained by pollen, and is made memorable.

Masla deftly weaves jubilation and desolation. She names this emotion, “griefjoy,” in her poem, “Letter from my Lungs to My Legs” (Masla 28). She writes of “panging, irridescient,” the pain of sirens and needles, yet ends with a wish to be “winged and whole…To concave the sky into clean sound fingerprints of sleep” (Masla 28, 29). With her, we too, move through pain, through joy, through ecstasy, into clean air, to breathe and to sleep.

It is rare to find a book so complete in spirit, of prayer, and spell, and yet so grounded in the physical. Much of the movement of the book is of the sort done from a bed, or in a state of dreaming, lying in the tall grasses, or on a blanket, “half-asleep under a purple sweater” (Masla 13). Masla writes:

“I don’t want to brush. Let me tell you

about stretching out, then, into the fresh, fragrant

after driving and dangling my fingers

through an almost warm wind. The open window,

as if summer —as if not sick—as if almost carefree.” (Masla 13)

One is reminded that this is a book of convalescence, and the title itself, The Underdream, implies both spirit and earth, how dreams can lie with us, that they are not just lofty things, but that which stays with us in the bed, that which follows us into both “soil and sky” (Masla 58).

At the end of The Underdream, in “Returned,” Masla states,

“Hey,

I can learn

imperfect holiness.

I can learn this

dappled afternoon.” (Masla 66)

And longer after reading the book, we find our afternoons more dappled with sunlight. At the end, I couldn’t help but repeat Masla’s last lines out loud, “I have never been / so thankful” (Masla, 66 ). The Underdream is a collection of poetry of light that lingers, a book of afterglow.

The Underdream is available from Cornerstone Press

Hannah Yerington is the author of the chapbook Sheologies, published by Minerva Rising Press in 2023. Her first full-length poetry collection, Garlic Moon, is forthcoming with Monkfish Book in Fall 2026/Winter 2027. Some of her awards and recognitions include being a finalist for The Peseroff Prize, one of the winners of the 2024 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest, and a winner of the Minerva Rising Dare to Be Chapbook Contest. She is the director of The Bolinas Poetry Camp for Girls and received an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University. Her work can be found in Lilith, Porkbelly Press, Prism, Room Magazine, Half Mystic Press, Hey Alma, and Cascadia Daily News. She writes about Jewish magic, teenage prophet babes, and plant ancestors. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her imp puppy, Poe, her priestess kitten, Tala, and her warrior-chef husband, Kris. Find her on Instagram @hannahyerington.