The Absence of Knowing

Henriksen (Ordinary Sun) writes "through the dark times" with arresting candor and conscientiousness in this muscular second collection. The book, broken into five sections, examines "the choking labyrinths of adulthood": fatherhood, divorce, addiction, and "polyphonic fuck ups." Written in a "rapture of distress," the collection documents the swells and dangerous ebbs of a life lived exhaustively. For Henriksen, the world is always instantly changeable and he warns the reader of this instability. "Gorgeous 3 PM sunlight/ Hits the neighbor's aluminum roof// When I look back from my cat/ Just ordinary sun in the leaves," he writes. In the poem "Relent," Henriksen observes himself, hauntingly, drinking: "I was just an asshole under a streetlamp/ Who saw the leering drunk but would not share// Our common disease/ A pair of fruits rotting in distant baskets." Yet later in the collection, with relentless self-awareness, Henriksen transforms into "the sober single dad who lives behind a head shop in a tiny apartment." He is self-deprecating, yet filled with surprise at how he has changed within the shifting world around him. Henriksen chronicles his transformation over the course of the collection, though he claims, "I do not need a style, only to move and watch the formations of time, of sound, and of color and shape." (Apr.)