Dressing the Bear

In this moving debut, Leary meditates on the spaces the dead leave behind, offering an elegiac exploration of sibling bonds through the story of a brother lost too young to an overdose in jail. Leary weaves a double-edged narrative of family pain and redemption: “Another strange derangement of fact: if lucky,/ your life will be worth the sadness of maybe one or two people.” The lost brother in these poems illustrates the conundrum of potential, his “hand in mine each time he says, I don’t care about who/ I could be. I only want more of who I am.” These poems candidly consider the brutality of truth and its attendant beauty: “What happened to you as a child was not all that interesting? Brother, only in a world that takes you hostage,/ are you free.” Reckoning with the deeper frustrations of spiritual life, the speaker remarks, “Soon it occurs to you, only God cannot tell you what you want to hear.” Throughout, Leary skillfully highlights the juxtaposition of life and death: “The day before you died,/ you’d ordered/ a kayak/ online. We’re still waiting/ for it to arrive.” Elegant in their simplicity, these beautiful poems enact the power of capturing grief, transience, and spiritual searching on the page. (July)