These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit

Charara (Something Sinister) offers in his ruminative fourth collection poems that challenge the moral and metaphysical hierarchies in deceptively simple language. "Which is holier,/ the cathedral/ burning// or the spiders/ under the pews?" he asks in one poem. Nor do political hypocrisies evade Charara's penetrating lyricism: "In a big country/ the leader warns the leader of a small country/ there must be change or else." Whether chronicling Arab American experiences of discrimination or relating uncomfortable episodes in a marriage, these poems favor an honesty that will elicit laughter if it doesn't make one cry, as in a suite of short poems simply titled "Mean," in which Charara writes, "you broke my heart./ And I thanked the sun, stars, and moon/ when you got sick/ and did not come back." These surprising and transgressive poems confront the everyday contradictions of living with equal parts biting insight and grace. (Apr.)