This is a collaborative chap between Steven Karl and Angela Veronica Wong that mixes prose poems and poetry. Each piece borrows a line from the previous and uses it as a thematic jumping off point, giving the chap a rough thematic cohesion yet the conceit gives each author plenty of room to improvise.
Really enjoyed the alertness of each poem to the other, their mutual echoes often have a kind of flirty wit as the poems self-consciously tackle the idea that a collaboration is based in a desire to know the other and the poems themselves are a simultaneous revealing and dissembling.
“To my choreographer of dance fear not for every fantasy fails before reaching your reach….It is Sunday & I am feeling perverse. Forgive me. I am full of lies. Every fantasy may end in denial but they all begin with your legs.”
“This
is where I mistook parallel for intersection
I ask you questions
and ignore the answer
are an orchid with too many overeagers ears We
lace under my shirt The peaking
I’ll close my eyes Now it’s something new”
Plus check out the tap dancing hamburger and hotdog on the cover. Well, they look they’re done tap dancing and are waiting for a ride. Maybe to an after party where they’ll forget they are tired?
