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Michael Kriesel:
LONG DARK


Zerx Press
5016 Inspiration Dr. SE
Albuquerque NM, 87108


44 pp., $4.00

Kriesel mixes modern mythology (Kryptonite, Cthulu, Bill Bixby, Dr. Doom) with his post-Navy experiences in the long poem LONG DARK. Alienation and disorientation is captured in lines like: "My lst week in the graveyard/ and we're in this metal shed/ where all the people who die/ over winter get stored because/ the ground's too hard to dig," and "I've always been attracted/ to the wives of friends./ Perhaps because we have/ so much in common," and "You were 2 hours of the/ best foreplay I ever had". There are explosions of honesty, confusion, and anger. There is fruitless lust, and endless pointless jobs. There is the America we live in today, undressed, and without illusions.--Oberc


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This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1996.

Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press