"afterlove" by Mario Petrucci (Cinnamon Press, 2020)

The first piece I liked was "storm", which (minus line-breaks) ends - "from blue-black tops a glow in us that shifts from over shoulders to make you crane & arch your spine shuddered supple along its length & split from mine as a lash tossed out & up just before its downward snap until our breath in great fat drops slaps into our sunlit dust your slow slow oh"

Here are 2 starts that don't appeal to me -

• an interior the size of a cantaloupe you grow on mother-sap (p.28)
• you dark-eyed god god-eyed whose eyes brim dark you look & suck then suck & look (p.30)

and here's one that does

• because of You our sky is Ocean in suspense (p.38)

Here are extracts that don't appeal to me -

• before brain could wink I turned to face you saw that look of your own making hung there in darkness eyes unblinking burnt black with love ... now in dimmest light your eyes unopened here beside me with another's love aglow in your face (p.49)
• a kiss unearthed dreadless from our subsoiled bed presented as if its one coin undated were all that remained of your great abandoned civilisation (p.55)
• Our eyes scan the question but don't quite rhyme. (p.57)

Other reviews

Liam Nolan (Divided into four sections, there is a loose narrative that can be glimpsed throughout. From the intensity of a relationship, portrayed mostly in bed (carnal in parts, but there is also the sensuality of sleep and simply being near another) through to familial love, and on to the ‘afterlove’ of the title: that point at which love collapses, is broken, but its aftermath still surrounds.)