Twelve poems lightly assembled into a chapbook without a strong theme. A touch of the suburban intellectual. The first poem is strong, using fellatio as a metaphor for oppression in America, but from this strong start the following works seem to drift aimlessly through the miasma of the middle class. But Valtonburg's attempts at social statements sometimes ring hollow--for example, in "Ionic Matriculations" he states, "There's a death match on TV, and they're/ selling me the universe with garlic./ American Indians want me to buy a Honda/ maybe with four doors, so I can drive/ my two blue-eyed boys to a school where/ we have stolen the dreams of his children." Vaultonburg does hit a fine note once in a while, like in "Lost and Found" where he shows a momentary passion,"Ignoring sad son-of-a-bitch Frost/ Who hid his son's Prozac/ and never raised a tent/ any living being could sleep under." Here I applaud this rare bold stroke of iconoclastic plunder. Still, at only two dollars this chapbook is worth a read.--R.R. Lee Etzwiler
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #2,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.