You got to respect Weinman when he says, in "Recycling": "Rimming our sunken eyes in chalk/ we lightly touch each other's holes." And that's just in the first few pages of this collection. At first the sloppy production threw me off guard, and I was thinking, yeah, right, another slapped together grabbag of bullshit words. But Weinman caught my eye, then on the next page was "The Sudden" by Rane Arroyo which began: "The last poet I fucked/ asked me in the morning/ if the tide was at the windows."; on the next page after that we get a decent suicide poem by John Grey which catalogs various failed attempts and ends with: "suicide no longer kills/ it just scribbles on her history." These are the kinds of angry lines I like to read. They capture the desperation, the pent up pissed-off aggression, and they let you know that poetry, in the right hands, can be a dangerous weapon. And there are so many strong lines: "She went up to the bar to order a drink/ She wanted something hard/Down her throat" (Julie A. Stevens), "Someday I will sew his mouth shut." (Kimberly Sweet), and on the last page (actually the back cover) we get a decent review and critical look at the new FACTSHEET FIVE. There is dirt and sweat and long hours of greedy desperation in this collection, and it looks fine on my shelf, next to the poets who have survived so well in that wilderness.--oberc
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #3,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.