Black, samurai-swift imagination and humor as hard as a jackhammer's heart, Smith captures candid incidents from youth to present with images which could have been reflected from a fun-house mirror. "It's my turn to wear the dog collar.// I mount you, oh so slowly/ I am slashing my wrists/ the blood mixing with your hair..." Here is rage, pathological enough to be trivial, trivial enough to be cool and seductive. There is a spontaneous, unmediated emotion here, a delicious sexual darkness. Suicide, sadomasochism, punk bravura, child abuse, academic failure, self-depreciation, spouse abuse, drunken sex, miscued allegories, old age dread and drawings by Dan Nielsen. How can it get any better than this?--R.R. Lee Etzwiler
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1996.