Jolene’s Reviews > Balloon Pop Outlaw Black > Status Update

"How did this book get published?" - Will Ejzak after listening to "The Church of the Open Crayon Past"

Long years of breathing / the air down here have given us lung complaints: if sea stars are / all lung and tarantulas have four lungs, how can two be enough / for a Walking-Talking? Yet two is enough and two is a fact; / we cough and feel stabbing pains, we feel our own pickaxes / strike down inside us and pry up our chunks out pink / quartz, and we spit.

From "The Front Half and the Back Half of a Horse in Conversation"

Tonight is dress rehearsal;
the horse shakes a hand heartily inside itself
and wishes itself good luck. "Are you galloping
hard in all your parts?" the front half asks the back,
and they take their first step forward, powered
with plunging stomachs.

"The Construction of a Forest for the Stage" is the first poem from this collection that I quite like!

"Last thing she knew he lived in the west. When his name appears in her mind, it is written in lasso" (43).

"The cartoon reaches deep into a pocket, deep into a hole in the pocket, into "hammerspace," and retrieves a huge pair of scissors. His mother, who lives there, hands him what he needs. Touches the tips of his fingers."

When I told Will the premise of the major works in this collection, he said it sounded exhausting. Yes. It kind of is.