Saturday

The ominous and cautionary sophomore volume from Ross (A Timeshare) explores intimacy through alienation and its potential for violence, laying bare the dynamics and motivations of desire. “His body was so beautiful, I wanted/ to hurt it,” Ross writes in “History,” “but I couldn’t/ do it right from outside./ I had to go in through the mind.” Later, she observes the significance of being on the receiving end of pain: “If you can let them/ hurt you deep enough, you’ll be/ inside the other person.” Ross resides in spaces of dislocation, making sharp observations about herself and her environment. She writes about an annual family reunion, teaching abroad, and, in one of the volume’s most vivid poems, a surreal job working for an artist in New York, where she was paid to tweeze apart the wings of butterflies and pin them onto Styrofoam: “we were paid per butterfly.” In another entry, she perfectly captures the mosaic of Airbnbs and cheap hotels that define a journey across the American West. “I try to force my soul up to the surface of my skin,” she remarks, an effort that is evident in each poem. These are strange and lucid poems from a gifted practitioner of the form. (Nov.)