Three Books from Copper Canyon Press that I like

I’ve ordered these three books, and they’re currently sitting at my house, but I’m at work, so I’m going to use the copy form the Copper Canyon brochure:

Ed Skoog
Mister Skylight

“I write it because we are in the dark, years later, and I want to tell you”


from West Coast

Mike’s up from Noe Valley one Friday
and we go out to Copper Gate
in Ballard with his in-laws, for pickled
herring and strange Danish cheeses.
Decorating the restaurant bathroom
hang light boxes displaying nude
women posing in black-and-white,
and men who are dressed like women.
This used to be a sailor’s bar, and what
remains is this form of their loneliness,
and it becomes mine for a few hours,
reminding my body of its lusts
for close skin and how different from light
skin is, more like glass, or the breathing
of a horse in a dark, sodden field.



Mark Bibbins
The Dance of No Hard Feelings

“There isn’t a school or movement I consider myself a part of, though others may have me figured out—I haven’t asked. Music, pop culture, politics, and what some might call ‘love’ are all in my book—often in the same poem.”


from A Perfect Day

Finally all the verbs gave up,
agreeing to throw their
weight behind to be. Everything

turned fashionably Zen-like, like
a picnic in early autumn.
Of course you say for someone

somewhere there is no autumn so
it is wasted, but be
quiet now. [This is how you try

to hobble everyone and we’ve had it.]
The others will weigh in soon,
from the watery edges

of their dosages,
from the straight scars
of their days.



Brenda Shaughnessy
Human Dark with Sugar

“My first book was filthy. My parents were mortified. They’d say, ‘Yes our daughter wrote a book, but we don’t have a copy.’ My next book is filthy, too.”


from Why Is the Color of Snow?

It’s true that snow takes on gold from sunset
and red from rearlights. But that’s occasional.
What is constant is white,

or is that only sight, a reflection of eyewhites
and light? Because snow reflects only itself,
self upon self upon self,

is a blanket used for smothering, for sleeping.
For not seeing the naked, flawed body.
Concealing it from the lover curious, ever curious!

Who won’t stop looking.
White for privacy.
Millions of privacies to bless us with snow.

Don’t we melt it?
Aren’t we human dark with sugar hot to melt it?