Poems from London Magazine, etc.
Some extended metaphors: "In the Darkroom" has 3 parts - "Preparation", "Developing" and "Printing"; "Unsinkable" begins with "Wife, husband, children all slide away/ as the huge ship of their love pulls out".
"Child", "Fast", "Lazarus", "Cardiac", "IUI", "Discovery" don't do enough for me. The short lines of poems like "Cardiac" draw attention to the lack of material
"The Guardians of the Water" is an anecdote/fable which is prose, but for the layout. Same for "Lazarus", "Check Up" etc. Try reading this book after reading Flash.
The "Under Cover" section of 7 sonnets is weak.
"Cycle" ends with "every month your womb coughs them out,/ these unmanned craft, adrift in a sea of blood,/ Maydays from the body's dream of resurrection.", which I like, but there are deadening lines like "streaming a trail of silver in its wake" ("Slug Desire" - why both "a trail of" and "in its wake"?). In "Newborn", "She is wordless, a fish newly out of water", which doesn't work for me. At the end of the poem there's "Rapt, she is gazing at the streaming glass". It's raining, so maybe the idea is that she's missing water, but a fish would lurch desperately, not "loll". In the next poem, a toddler is "starting suddenly/ at the zoo of her own voice.// First steps in the spacesuit of skin, the words/ she will grow into.". I like the idea of the surprise but why both "starting" and "suddenly"? And I'd prefer "in the spacesuit of words".
The title poem is too long, but it might be my favourite.
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