Reveilles

by Nathan Hoks, Hoks

"The sense of the body flowing from an old comfortable posture / to a new exciting yet strange position" is the animating force in Nathan Hoks' dazzling first collection of poems. His fine gradations of observation ("exciting yet strange") turn the reader into a barometer of strong subtleties like those of the weather, that can be minute even as they affect us powerfully. These poems are like great gulps of fresh air.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every sentence in this collection feels like an out of body daydream. Like if purgatory was more magical. Like if ayahuasca was a book of poems. "They pet us with their wings. / The wings are shaped like eyebrows. Their eyebrows / burn in water. The water is their home."

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

from Reveilles by Nathan Hoks:

Aroma Therapy


Your entrance is never a segue.
Your beauty is a bouquet of fossils.
The marks on your hand
are the marks on my hand.
Your surface is always reloading.
Your caravan is never exploding.
When I have an idea, you are
spilling coffee in it. You are wearing
yellow and standing by the pink door.
Your moth wings are wheels rolling
on a floor of cinder blocks.
My arms flailing, my teeth gnashing.
Your mirror is the swarm of locusts
thrashing through the office window.
Your mirror is that watermelon
sliced and sweating on the sidewalk.
Your flecks are the plumes of paper factories.
I live in the shadow of your stage coach.
I sleep in the corner of your ice castle.
Luminescence breeds in our despair.