cover image ZOOP

ZOOP

Carol Szamatowicz, . . Owl Press, $12 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-9669430-2-3

In paragraphs that unspool calmly and intently, Szamatowicz's regular, matter-of-fact prose plays straight man (or woman) to the speaker's cognitive and emotional associations: "By crossing the short sea and looking back, I see you waiting for the spring in your coat." Grammar, too, can change direction at any moment, and anacolutha abound: "All acts are specific, I go and the scenes come with, how they feel, smell, sing the wood's underbelly up, listening to the fanning wheels long and short timers loosen." Szamatowicz combines deadpan humor with an oblique tenderness; in "Dear Hypochondriac," the letter-writer makes unrelated observations that a person convinced of illness might find as helpful as anything else—i.e., not at all, but kind of, nonetheless. (Oct.)