Dolefully, a Rampart Stands

Ackerson-Kiely’s third book of poems begins ominously. Some kids push a canoe into a river, but “this isn’t an occasion to talk/ about the body.” The long prose poem sequence “Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed” returns to the found body—after an interruption for some other fine poems, including “Shine,” a love poem, and “The Pine Tree” (“When you put on a dress you get to die”). The setting could be any rural U.S. area, where young people gather to imitate adults and girls bear the brunt of it (a particularly gruesome instance is recalled in “Laconia”). Ackerson-Kiely’s strength is in crafting a prose poem dense with plot and surprise: “Coroner’s report biblical. Sodomized, blunt force trauma. Maybe a/ brick from a hopeful construction site. The town dying slowly, all day I troll the someday graves.” The title appears in Made to Lie Down in Green Pastures,” a long poem wrapped around a figure called “The President.” Told to lie down, the speaker shape-shifts: “Our small apartment faced the park./ My President sent his very best./ I wore the barren ice-field dress/ until the grass began to poke through.” The language here is stark and devastating, but the reader could use more help in places. [em](Feb.) [/em]