Unlike many "performance" poems, these stand up powerfully on the page, as in: "Walk to the water circle,/ dive to the bottom/ and nail your question/ to the dragon's door" (from "Mother's Advice"). Poetry-slam winner, art-history scholar, forbidden fantasizer Rutkowski has packed arresting lines, inspired graphic design, and innovative weirdness into these 4x4 pages. These 14 brief poems each slice a heretofore wholly unsuspected microsection from the murky interface of consciousness and world, like "a test pattern from the right half/ of a hare's brain" ("Half a Thought"), or suddenly shift the disturbingly untoward into sharpest focus: "a tiger pouncing on a zoo-booster/ a wife shaving her housekeeper's head/ a kidnapper guarding his capturing box" ("Assault With a Deadly Plotline"). Finally, having read, we can "Skim some rain./ Whirl in surf./ Dream of hair" ("-plasm").--Steve Fried
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
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