Scrap Bones

Collier Brown's Scrap Bones reads like a post-pandemic epilogue to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." No angels or flying horses here, just panic disorders, email fatigue, and the spiritual dead end of a 23-and-Me test kit. And yet, resilient are the muses in this collection-the bees, the starlings, the dragonflies-skimming over the wastes. The Sabine Series in Literature ... from "Orion, Break" they're sleeping in their homes, they're waking from their beds, they're at their desks and on a call. They're unimpressed. That's not your fault. Nor your concern. I'm tired of images, of lines and dots and codes. When I step into the dark, I only want the novas and the nowheres in between, and if I'm very lucky- if I've beaten all the odds- just one, naÏve fluoresce of the insect who is its own hello/goodbye.