Fences

In an overview of life from childhood to middle age, Fences grapples with fears, longings and insecurities while weighing the choices the author has made and the resulting rewards and privations. Mourn her changing relationship with a neighbor boy, first seen as a youngster running through the woods to bring her a Christmas card, to his mother's arrest for running a meth lab, to his own capitulation to becoming a meth cook.

As Hayley Mitchell Haugen, Editor, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, observes, "'Fence work never gets done,' Denise writes in a collection that expertly explores literal and figurative wanderers both within and beyond the boundaries of our lives, our loves, our comfort zones: sheep, family, tenants, preachers, depression, the imagination. Here, Denise lingers in the spaces in which 'a poem clamors to be written,' reminding us, 'the harvest is for everyone.'"

Listen to the Heidelberg press "snorting like a stallion" in the old chicken coop as her father prints wedding invitations. Feel the unrelenting stare of sheep, the black slots of their pupils pulling you in, dissolving you. The world is a strange and wonderous place, and as Brother Lawrence says, "God is everywhere."