paper • 68 pages • 15.95
ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-18-1
A collection of poems constructed like a series of film montages or collages showing what the world looks like now.
Like a series of slides from a film reel, the poems of Dregs reveal the ruin, remnants or dregs left over from the wars and economic and human inequalities of our world today.
THE HOUR OF THE STAR from Dregs
In the blue séance room
Beneath the stacked chandelier,
The miracle of sorrow, or
Milk and stars.
The deep
Key of death.
A black
Error on the edge
Of the tall
Blonde field.
And no one knows
Where that besieged city is.
But to go back
To that
Little town and be born,
Again.
“…an exquisite fever dream of drugs, anorexia and unwanted sex (in both senses of the word) populated by young women and men…who have lost all sense of where the edge is…”-Dana Jennings, The New York Times
“Cruz showcases her trademark spare palette and haptic focus in a brief, satisfying fifth collection that hews close to the anxious, delirious mood of its predecessor.” Read the full review.
“…Over and over, Cruz generates a saturating atmosphere that refuses to give in to the urge to redeem art, to instrumentalize it, to turn it into something that improves us….” – Johannes Göransson, Spoon River Poetry Review