Lay Down & Get Lost

by Nikola Pepera

94 pages, Paperback

Published April 23, 2024

Reviews

[Erin K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pepera's debut poetry collection, adorned with a mesmerizing carousel, transports you into a realm of daring love, mad art, and life's hidden corners. It's as if we've tumbled down a radical grassy knoll, lost in a psychedelic dreamscape where eccentrics tango and swap peyote sugar cane sticks. Are we trapped in a 1960s backseat, laughing hysterically after time-traveling through a vintage wardrobe? Or are we lucidly dreaming alongside Pepera, hopping through memories and experiences as a bohemian bombshell lost in and out of time? As we delve deeper into these pages, we risk losing ourselves entirely, surrendering to the intoxicating pull of Pepera's surreal world until the very last page.

[Manuel Chavarria · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of poets plying their trade in and around Los Angeles these days but Nikola Pepera eclipses them with maddening ease.

[Jack Skelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you “lay down and get lost” in a California paradise of tangerine trees and Charlie Chapin bungalows, you may be “sleeping on a cliff." And you may wake up to see someone watching you cry. Marc Bolan, David Crosby, Jim Morrison, Richard Brautigan and Syd Barrett ghost the L.A. and San Francisco Bay streets in twists and fragrances. The perfume inebriates. The music elevates. The cities are painted paisley. And yet, under the petals of these flower songs and LOL observations of a psyche “too esoteric to drive,” does one detect coded trauma? There are “bruises at the wrist.” The black butterflies have teeth. And are the men who demand love – “All My Husbands” – intoxicating or deeply toxic? Nikola Pepera’s lyricism is haunted. And haunting.

[Lexe McCally · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the Garden of Eden for all us beatnik flower children. I wish I could string these poems into mala beads and wear them around my wrist… to forever meditate on the psychedelic essence of Pepera’s spirit. Each poem I uncover is a step on the road of whimsical inspiration. Thank you Nikola.

[Vero]

No More Bad Juju for You
For You
No More Bad Juju for You