A Town Like That

A Town Like That depicts small-town life through poems that are empathetic, witty, and bold. The characters here are the people all of us have known. Many of them show up in a poem called "High School Reunion" the almost-boyfriend, the fast girl, the anorexic, the teacher whose students don't know he is gay. The speaker in the poems sometimes yearns toward the trappings of an idealized suburban family life, but more often she leans toward a wildness and freedom that seem almost, but not entirely, out of reach. In the final poem the speaker meets with her cousin and close childhood companion in a local bar, and they lift glasses, wondering "how everything and nothing has changed."