How To Take A Bullet: And Other Survival Poems
Winner of the Annual Poetry Center Book Award, judged by Mukta Sambrani.
The poems in this collection have titles ruthlessly appropriated from The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. Between the lines of the literal, contemplative metaphors masquerade as instructions, invoking both survival and surrender. The landscape is often urban, woven of dream. Ocean wet and desert dry, here is a windswept city of powdered bone and liquid night. There is always the potential for desire. Teeth and sky. Blindfolds and breadcrumbs. Mouths naming and claiming the elements: fire, wind, texture, motion. There are dangerous beasts to conquer. Internal and external. Fear on lips and fingertips. These poems are weapons of change, lessons of smoke and rain, freedom, and finally, the breath. Published by Punk Hostage Press (2014).
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“Every word in this collection is carefully chosen and placed in position by an author who knows exactly what she wants to achieve. These poems are weird, alive, disturbing, and above all personal. You can feel the author picking her way through culture and her own experience, finding pieces of meaning along the way and building something beautiful and horrible from them. This is a special book that no one else will ever be able to write because it comes from a singular experience.” Dale Bridges, author of PULL TITLE