peep

The poem that opens Blau’s ruminative debut is a knockout, riffing on palindromes to burst forth like a vernal pond in spring: “as Sun,/ uncaging coiled ribs, exhaled pure/ vitriolage of Spring/ &—once more/ newly heaven-/ bent on ravishment, & scour, & scraping/ clean without// distinction—down-/ lusted blind translucence towards us.” This lush voice, however, is less present in later poems, such as the long poem “The Fear,” which begins: “If you’re like/ me, a person// who’s alive/ today// in this world even// now as we speak there’s/ no more I can say.” It asks, “Does anybody know/ something good to do with 15 lbs of yuzu fruit?/ Just now/ I wrote that. Did/ you see? That/ was me/ just writing that just now.” Insinuated trauma, a disappearing father, and a mother who doles out canned peas for magic pills intersect, making these pages like a fractured fairy tale. A prose poem, “We’re all Human, all of us Girls, and We’re Young,” mixes horrific histories of women killed in the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire with specifics from the narrator’s own life, such as “Once I took a bath with my goldfish.” This collection teases and perplexes. (Apr.)