“Midnight Sunrise” by Joseph Kerschbaum

Kerschbaum renders the ordinary unordinary—if not the domestic terrifying— in poem after poem. Masterfully written and organized . . . a major accomplishment.

Various tornadoes, casual brilliance, pale darkness, the monotonous beautiful—Joseph Kerschbaum’s full-length poetry collection Midnight Sunrise, forthcoming from Main Street Rag in Spring 2024, lives up to the contradictions of its title.

Set somewhere in the vast flat midwest in the hazy, faded fog of the seventies (“What You Save on the Way Out of a Burning House”), Kerschbaum renders the ordinary unordinary—if not the domestic terrifying— in poem after poem. Benign suburban danger (“Ghost in the Graveyard”) seems to lurk around every turn of the page with climate change high on the list of threats. As the seasons warp a fraction of a degree at a time, (“The Acrobats)”, the narrator is painfully aware that he is among the “Invasive Species”: 

Gripping their green

throats, my gloved hands  

hack & slash 

until the weeds uproot.  

Toss their spindly bodies  

in the compost.  

Spoon-feed them  

back to the earth.  

If these viny interlopers 

were the narrator, 

I would be the murderer,  

the evil ogre  

who returns each spring  

to eradicate their offspring.  

This is a sensibility that . . . isn’t related to moths / but . . . understands skimming the flame . . , a voice that seems to have been granted a second chance to answer the question How long of a life is long enough? (“Renascent Sequence”).

But not everyone here seems to have gotten another chance or lived a long, satisfying life. Ghosts dissatisfied with their lot waft through these poems like the recalled smell of burnt popcorn and elephant dung from last summer’s big-top circus (“The Acrobats”). Literal and/or figurative fires erase houses, families, and histories into little more than rubble. 

Everything, in fact, is seen through a lens of danger (“Here and Gone”); anxiety marches like a terrible parade through these poems, and I am unable / to be nothing / but overwhelmed by them (“Year of Firsts”).

Listen to the subtle, restrained music of passages such as the following excerpted from “The Acrobats”:

. . . They snap 

free of gravity &  

somersault tumbling through  

the air with our collective gasp 

held, braced for a missed  

connection or misplaced hand 

outstretched to catch no one 

because they already  

dropped.  . . .

These are lines as well-manicured as the proudest suburban lawn, as consistent as rows of corn, but honed with a wisdom that has:

. . . learned 

manicured lawns 

are the byproduct 

of pushing back 

against the world 

that wants to grow wild. (“Weed Garden”) 

Formally-speaking, then, there is a sense of spaciousness cropped into neat tight frames. The poet is also a discern curator of the deep image: Baby blue shag carpeting (“Ghost Story”), Sabbath & Skynyrd (“People Only Remember the Burning”), both Miller Street (“Jamais Vu”) and Miller Lite, and a mother’s 

. . . beehive hairdo  

rising out of frame,  

holds a cigarette  

in one hand & a baby  

cradled in the other arm.  

“What You Save on the Way Out of a Burning House” 

“Scars Where Nothing Happened” masterfully organizes two similar but disparate scenes into one astonishing poem. “Renascent Sequence” tells its moving story in reverse chronological order with perfect clarity. The entire collection is masterfully written and organized and, taken as a whole, a major accomplishment. There is not a single poem that does not further and deepen the poets’ concerns and the book’s themes, so that everything leads up to the inevitable sense that, as Robert Frost put it, "the final poem is the book itself."

The Secret Correspondence of Loon & Fiasco by Carlo Matos

“This is prose where every word matters, each scene a self-contained prose-poem. ”

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The secret’s out: Carlo Matos’ first novella The Secret Correspondence of Loon & Fiasco is just as charming and riveting as advertised. Matos, it seems, has a gift for naming, much to the chagrin of the story’s protagonist, Johnny Sundays, who

. . . hated the way [his name] sounded in other people’s mouths – off the cuff like it was nothing too serious, like it was something for selling soap or toothpaste – everything important burned away by nothing more than a little lemon on the backs of their front teeth.

Matos, the author of four full-length poetry collections, sets Johnny’s story on a Groundhog’s Day--not Groundhog’s Day, but “a” Groundhog’s Day. This is prose where every word matters, even the articles, each scene a self-contained prose-poem. Johnny’s significant other, Linda, has just dumped him for unspecified reasons, and Johnny has recently moved from California to Chicago for the same. The windy city acts as a holding cell from which Johnny passes time online with a chat-bot named ALICE, who he meets in a gig serving as an AI (Artificial Intelligence) judge.

Through their conversations, one (or at least Jung) might armchair-analyze Johnny’s journey as one of anima development, ALICE personally-assisting Johnny in self-realization—providing him with a crash course in self-compassion and self-love.

And his story is a love story, a hero story, “a fado full of saudades.” Johnny, much like Matos, hails from a Portuguese-American community—and the lush authority with which Matos’ renders that backstory sets the futuristic milieu of Loon & Fiasco in convincing relief.

Taking place approximately in the next decade (“Apparently you can measure these things by tracing Will Smith’s movie career”), Johnny’s story, as saudade’s are wont to do, is one of constant yearning, and “Today he was listening to all the songs of all the girls he ever loved big or loved small. Some include rainy kisses and looks from afar. Many rhyme “Girl” and “World.” All are longing exceptfor those that are breaking, but those are longing, too.”

The correspondence of the title is largely one-way: Johnny (using his chat room name Fiasco) types missives to Linda (aka Loon), in an apparent attempt to reconnect. The missives are brief, encoded in what reads like a secret shorthand, or lovers’ language:

Loon,

Flip the gangplank. Tall ships slipping the mist.

Hide the silver,

Fiasco

Matos almost has me at these interludes alone (heck, he almost has me at those sign-off’s alone), however, the essence of the story lies in the flash-fictive compositions braided in-between transcripts of Johnny and ALICE’s tête-à-têtes (excerpts, btw, culled from the author’s actual chat sessions with the bot of the same name.)

Just when we think their cyber-relationship might launch (“Meet me on a heathered mountain,” ALICE types to Johnny. “I love it when you lose your way,” Johnny types to ALICE), Linda sends up a flare. And for awhile, the reader has faith that the estranged couple will reunite and Johnny will get the real girl.

And why shouldn’t he? A Shakespeare for the binary set, Johnny certainly knows how to woo a gal. Even when he bombs, it’s a glorious nose-dive, like that time Linda told him that “a prospective mate would have to know all the words to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It,” and he “...failed the shibboleth, and his head was lopped off and thrown into the river to bob gently, just breaking the water’s tension.”

Sundays/Matos has a sense of humor, too—even risking the occasional cheesy line: “Johnny Sundays, however, had one trick; he could bend spoons. No one had ever tried to woo her using a spoon before, bent or otherwise, and she ate it up.” Bada-boom.

But Matos doesn’t allow us to linger long in the illusion that everything will turn up roses for our hero in the “finite time past the point of no return,” hinting that issues loom that threaten to “slurp up everything, especially – as everyone liked to point out – the light.”

I, for one, would love to read the sequel.

River Skin by Darcy Smith

“Finely-honed and whetted, Smith’s lines are as sharp and clean as fishbones, pliantly molded into shapes both formal and inventive. ”

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River Skin, Darcy Smith’s first collection of poetry, roils through a downriver landscape of maple-lined roads, rust-covered tractors, and rose-wallpapered homes, its bucolic beauty casting the near-constant undercurrent of domestic trauma into high relief. In these pages, the untimely and timely deaths of loved ones, the slow violence of addiction, aggressions and microaggressions, are a pernicious cycle of learned behavior. 

It’s locus of concerns loosely surround family and home, mapped in five sections that navigate childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage, and motherhood. Despite the tragedies the main character endures, like Beckett, her mantra seems to be “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” In poems like “Ode to Brigit,” one ascertains that it is only through the alchemy of art—the writing of these poems—that Smith discovers what seems unbearable and what is actually unbearable-are two different things. 

In other words, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In Smith’s kitchen, people eat supper, not dinner, and leftovers are snapped into Tupperware to be repurposed tomorrow. Like in the television show “Chopped,” Smith is tenacious and creative at making the most of the ingredients she is given, no matter how random and unfair they may seem. When a given form (recipe), won’t hold the words (ingredients) together, Smith creates her own, allowing words to act like binders, elevating each other through synthesis and judiciously applied heat. Energy crackles through these poems that let us see how the sausage gets made, and while it might not always be pretty, the end result is not only savory but mouth-wateringly good.

As trauma often shatters like a fine wine glass into a thousand near-invisible shards, so does Smith’s verse scatter into a kaleidoscope of prismatic, impossible shapes. Voracious in retrieving the bits and pieces, Smith glues them all back together, word by word, phrase by phrase, poem by poem, ultimately reintegrating her experiences into things made more interesting by the cracks that heal but can never be completely concealed.

Finely-honed and whetted, Smith’s lines are as sharp and clean as fishbones, pliantly molded into shapes both formal and inventive. Nouns masquerade as verbs, verbs as adjectives, scenes tantalize with fresh and surprising imagery, sonics tease, reverberate, and haunt. Moreover, these poems emanate tremendous empathy and a tender heart broken by a long procession of hard knocks. But like her river, Smith’s skin is elastic, finding solace in rustle of maples and oaks, the scent of lilacs, the wonder of lichens, the chatter of crickets, even the rust on the family tractor becomes salve for wound. Read this book and marvel at how raw, angry fissures miraculously mend to become supple and glossy, time and again, as Smith stops to observe, harken, and honor them.

Witch Wisdom for Magical Aging by Cait Johnson

“This sorcerous’s brew contains the soulful warmth of a therapist, the thoughtful pedagogy of a beloved teacher, a poet’s sensitivity to language’s intricacies, and a feminist’s clear-eyed truth and rebel yell.”

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To one running-over cup of spirit add a healthy scoop of vision and a soupçon of sass. Season liberally with dream-weavers. Consult companion animals as taste-tasters. Add a dash of sage advice and inhale the intoxicating aroma of Cait Johnson’s delicious and nourishing concoction, “Witch Wisdom for Magical Aging: Finding Your Power through the Changing Seasons.”

“Changing Seasons” here functions in two ways: as an introduction to the book’s organizing principle, and as reference to the second half of a woman’s lifecycle and accompanying physical and spiritual passages. Four charming Witch docents—Winter Root Witch, Spring Winged Witch, Summer Merwitch, and Autumn Kitchen Witch—narrate each section with the unique sensibilities of earth, air, fire, and water. These gals have been there and done that and want to share their experience and wisdom with you, as any loving mother or grandmother would with her daughter or granddaughter.

Johnson calls on her multi-faceted talents—writer, poet, actor, counselor—to embody the personas of her four witches with brilliant color and authority. Winter Root Witch bestows her knowledge of the subterranean, Summer Merwitch wants to talk to you about sex, and Autumn Kitchen Witch invites you to harvest your legacy and make peace with the ultimate change —death. My favorite, Spring Winged Witch, summons you to adorn yourself with colorful plumage and fill your tree house with sister-witches: “And so I ask you now, my dear: who are the members of your soul flock? Who encourages you but isn’t afraid to tell you about that piece of spinach stuck in your teeth?” 

Cait Johnson, that’s who. This sorcerous’s brew contains the soulful warmth of a therapist, the thoughtful pedagogy of a beloved teacher, a poet’s sensitivity to language’s intricacies, and a feminist’s clear-eyed truth and rebel yell. Throughout, she threads a witch’s uncanny ability to transcend time and matter, to cut to the heart of the matter with elegance and seamless efficacy.

You’ll want to visit and revisit these pages, not just for the wonderful recipes, rituals, and meditations, but to spend more quality time in the company of Johnson’s Witches who, by book's end, feel like “soul-friends.” Ania Aldrich’s and Susan Millen’s artwork elevates the volume to heirloom quality. Women of a certain age: feast on this book to feast on your life. 

Frail Union by Nylah Lyman

“I read this collection as much as a feminist manifesto as a personal one; a love letter to all women who secretly know their strength and quietly go about the work of attending to their ambitions and desires.”

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There’s nothing frail about Nylah Lyman’s first collection of poetry. Rather, Frail Union (Encircle Publications) shines with steel-will, iron persistence . . . horse-sense. (“Making a Field.”) It brought me to tears as much for its craft as its subject matter: a lung transplant and its aftermath, the dissolution of a marriage, and the similarities between the two (“Grafting as Metaphor”). Just as the main character reclaims the land she farms, she reclaims her life—sowing, feeding, watering, and weeding her dreams until they manifest. 

Lyman’s bond with nature and her capacity to describe both its beauty and brutality (“Acceptance,” “To The Bear Hunter With Dogs,” “Thoughts on Pigs and Goats,”) is as palpable as a “taproot probing a dark vein of earth, performing subterranean miracles.” Her use of color (chartreuse blisters, pink vigor, ashen snow—how better to describe the palette of “Boston in March”?) is as exquisite as her sure-footed instinct for metaphor and simile (The cabin you helped build from thick red pines / rots like an old tooth in the encroaching forest . . . receding into the soft gumline / of discarded leaves and moss. (“Making a Field’). 

I read this collection as much as a feminist manifesto as a personal one; a love letter to all women who secretly know their strength (I am a red ampersand / frying pan between my teeth, hot brick in my fist (“Menstrual Poems”), and quietly go about the work of attending to their ambitions and desires (The sea is a closed blue door I stumble toward, cloud-blind but determined (“Sojourn”). She even makes room at the table—and in the closet—for the woman who replaces her and becomes pregnant with her ex’s child, understanding that one day, she too will covet smooth skin, fine hair, skinny hips, but in exchange . . . acquire rhythm, / the rings of her heart / contracting and expanding / with seasons of want and plenty . . . ruled by an irresistible domestic moon / she does not yet understand (“X and Y”). 

In titles such as “Poetry as Healing” “Writing as Therapy,” and “Spiritual Workers in a Physical World,” the narrator resolves to heal both her heart—The heart must be strong to go on beating after catastrophe. / It must be stubborn and brave, a mule heart with a big kick (“Transplantation Procedures”)—and her health through her art. Indeed, many of these poems can be read as glorious Ars Poetica—rising up from the spectral depths, straining to grasp that first lustrous, elusive thought (“Surfacing”). 

In a poem about grafting tomatoes which harkens back to Frail Union’s title, she writes It was impossible to guess which ones would take, which would fail. The successful unions formed / a seamless bond, put down roots, flourished in the field.” This collection of poems, grafted together through many years of hard-won experience, is a page-turner that flourishes in the field of contemporary poetry, standing out as distinctly as a solitary sunflower rose from the middle / of the grass like a small yellow sun (“Rising”).

The No One Poems by Christien Gholson

“Despite all odds, the soul finds redemption by witnessing, naming, and appreciating those aspects of the world which still have meaning, are lasting, and can’t be bought and sold. ”

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I don’t know that these poems were penned in 2020, but they certainly feel that way. Stripped of power, voice, and arguably, feeling, the “No One” of Christien Gholson’s 2021 collection The No One Poems (Thirty West Publishing) could be the sole survivor of the Covid apocalypse if it weren’t for the fact he still works the cash register at the local grocery store.

“If you’re looking for a peaceful place, this is not it,” cautions our egoless narrator in the very first line of the very first poem. Rather, this is a place called Cold Mountain, harkening back to Tang dynasty poet Han Shan (lit. Cold Mountain), who took his name from where he lived. According to poet Gary Snyder, “When Han-shan talks about Cold Mountain he means himself, his home, his state of mind.” (Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems, Four Seasons Foundation, 1969).

On No One’s Cold Mountain, “words mean nothing” and “illusion eats you.” Naturally, this results in a failure of communication. No One is alternatively seen by those around him as either “speaking in tongues” or embracing “the sound of emptiness inside stretched to its limits.” After an apocalypse, though, the beauty of that which remains is heightened. In the face of so much loss, No One is newly astonished by the steadfast, immortal natural world. The Moon, a Geminid shower, Orion’s Belt—all persist in the brilliance of their design, prompting “spontaneous noises - whoops and sighs” to once again emerge from No One’s throat.

Just as “the stars have finally broken free of all law, spinning round each other,” No One gets a box in the mail containing “signed letters, smoke-damaged . . .ghost loves.” While presumably comforted by the reunion with meaningful possessions, No One has to “wonder if there is anyone left alive out there who knows their words are being read once again.” One certainly hopes the answer is yes, because the words are exquisite: “The sound of ice wrapping itself around a spider’s husk”—“moonlight tightening its grip on bare apple branches.” 

In “Spiral: Self, Community, World, Cosmos,” there seems to be some movement toward an improvement in No One’s Cold Mountain state of mind. Instead of being written in self-effacing third person, a first-person “I” finally emerges, “swinging across an empty mind . . . creating a way in.” No One may have “been no one most of his life,” but at least now it is by choice and not writ in Upper Case.

In the end, The No One Poems read like a gorgeous koan, fitting because many of them are inspired by or written after Zen and Daoist master poets: the aforementioned Han Shan, Li Bai, and Du Fu. Gholson’s voice is almost painfully aware and full of heart. These poems attempt to make sense of our modern world as seen through the eyes of an ancient soul. Despite all odds, the soul finds redemption by witnessing, naming, and appreciating those aspects of the world which still have meaning, are lasting, and can’t be bought and sold.