At an Intersection

Of the 29 poems Michael Ruby has composed for At an Intersection, it may be the ""Overexposed Faces"" that endure the longest: ""A face behind a comb's teeth/ A face splashed with blue dye/ A face behind bars."" Ruby, who works at the copy desk of the Wall Street Journal, completed an MFA at Brown in the early '80s, letting this debut come together as poems crossed his path: ""Now that they're so near,/ in one of the cubbyholes at/ my post office branch,/ I should be celebrating."" His book is the seventh title for Alef Books, which won support from the Academy of American Poets' Eric Mathieu King fund.