Christine Hume's new book Shot, from Counterpoint Press, is a Baedeker of night, mapping a haunting landscape with a language she makes strange to fit the dreamscape in which the poems unfold. Dream wording a dream world.
Striking the hour in rounds
A freak disease tears across the vista
You’ve been told this is the year of medicine
Lunar halo must bother you tonight with some life
War shine and flare lit in the lips
...
Sugar awake in the animal disaster
Vaccinations break and they bother you
The situation of its waves
Puts catheters in blather-mouths
Time for you to ride
Hume writes us into a realm where “stars are swinging doors that miracle the shift,” her night made ours: “this night your existence depends upon the doubt of single pair of eyes stoning you from a low bridge.” And like the dark, Hume chastens us: “Pound at your own belief until its empty of you.” She draws the reader down into a language wedding illusion and certainty, ambiguity the quicksand under our feet. Get this book!
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