This debut from Broder, editor of the online poetry magazine La Petit Zine
, and a publicist at Penguin, is as funny and hip as it is disturbing. Poems with titles like “Where Is Your Vampire” and “Not Quite Ready for the NRA” feature jumpy, accessible lines about love and lust in a drug- and media-fueled world. “You’re nobody,” Broder only half-sarcastically proclaims, “ ’til some sweet-faced junkie/ with a Dixie cup of juice// and methadone loves you/ more than his drugs.” These poems are also quirkily compassionate (“Faith is a muscle// like the rotator cuff./ After the matinee// she saved soiled tissues—/roses in her coat—//remember that sadness won’t make you explode”), sexy, and at times even gross: “I’m wearing sunglasses// in the supermarket,/ mourning follicular fallout,/ getting pus on all the towels.” Throughout, Broder searches for a place to stand, and for an object for her considerable sympathies. This is a bright and unusual debut. (Feb.)
