Friday, October 31, 2008

TINDERBOX LAWN. CAROL GUESS. ROSE METAL PRESS


from ROSE METAL PRESS:

"Set on the margins of Seattle, beneath bridges and on the banks of waterways, in strip clubs and flooded farmland, the prose poems in Tinderbox Lawn illuminate the intersection of domesticity and bohemia, orthodoxy and passion. Each untitled block of prose constitutes a novel-in-miniature, with shadow characters and shards of plot. The intensity of Carol Guess’s poems builds through lyrical language and recurring images, capturing the moment when “the small mad heart at the center of things stalls mid-tick.”

small EXCERPT:

Every morning you walk past the house with broken windows and break another window. The shiny Valentine inside scrubs dishes at the sink. Think hard enough about broken glass and it becomes rain in a tumbleweed town, drowning out the neighbors’ quarrels. You’ve had to invent this life to make it work. Try speaking but no sound comes out, try tenderness but it twists in an instant. Think blood on the mattress. Try running, and not for the scenery.

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