If you don't like the first page, you might as well cut your losses - it doesnt get much better. Even the poems which make a valid (albeit obvious) point need drastic editing. I think "The right kind of blood" is best. "Jane" could have been the best. "When we arrive" and "56+" are maybe the worst, but it's a tough call. Here are some samples -
- I want/ the whales to suck in bellyfuls of fetid air and sing their songs for nobody, and I want the noise to be loud and unbearable,/ trauma translated into a sound only the tiny bones in the human ear/ can pick up, and let it become a forever-tune, like the sudden ringing in the ear (p.4)
- Everything changes when your body is a broken city (p.20)
- Does this phoenix sit in the skull of just a few of us,/ or must every human shed their skin of dreams to get a foot on the ladder? (p.24. Yuck)
- If only I could bottle your precocious self-adoration into a perfume to dab behind my ears (p.47)
- What's a name, but a rubber stamp on the soul, after all? (p.50)
- life does to women what distance does to lovers,/ quenches that thirst, douses that fire (p.55)
- I collect stories like drains collect rainwater, and heavy is the overflow of collective disappointment/ that comes from living undesired (p.59)
- shame is women's DNA to be pulled from their molars/ and I am strong, but/ my strength is only relative to the weights that are silent birthed with us (p.76. A mess)
