"When The Body Is a Guardrail"

By Kara Dorris

Finishing Line Press, published 2020

When the Body is a Guardrail offers its readers such physical and concise language—and the voice captivates us on this journey. Dorris has perfected the art of the highway pastoral in this collection, and every single poem gives us something to think about—something to look deeper into. What I like about this collection is that the readers can see what Dorris paints for us—and yet the lyric of the writing isn’t lost in any way. Take, for example, this passage from the title poem: “We let our ditches / become washed-out bridges. / Our road-kill, trophy mirages. / Let gold meridians / & guardrails disintegrate / into breadcrumbs & suggestion.” While Dorris meditates on abstraction, we are still given ripe metaphors and imagery along the way. Essentially, When the Body is a Guardrail is a smart and engaging book of poetry. Period.

–Adam Crittenden

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/when-the-body-is-a-guardrail-by-kara-dorris/

"Rolling In The Third Eye"

By John Thomas Allen

Rolling in the Third Eye is a carnivalesque collection of surrealistic language poems which describes a real nighttime world, which are received by a "shadow persona". The author's comment: "There's nothing fantastic about these poems. They are grimy jazz poems, or spooky garage sale poems."

John Thomas Allen is from New York.  Recently he's been in Sulfur Surrealist Poetry, Synchronized Chaos, and experimental experimental-literature.  More than that, as time

goes on, he wonders if Section 8 housing is really the good life. 

https://bookshop.org/books/rolling-in-the-third-eye/9781912963157