National Poetry Month: JACKET COPY FOR ‘A YELLOW PENCIL IN MIDAIR KEPT SKETCHING’ by Adam Atkinson

Things are either metaphors or not in these

poems. “Three ghosts pin / the tail on the

reader.” Ghost or literal ghost? Literate

ghosts know these poems by heart: I Must

Live Forever; The Editor is Delighted; Yes! Yes!

Yes!–all of the essentials. This poet holds a

gun to the reader’s face. (A bomb with a

shrinking fuse, either/or.) The poems fade

in and out of view, but the gun remains,

floating in space. Point is, it’s hard to look

away from a shrinking fuse. Forty years go

by, and the reader has a family and a vehicle,

sings tenor in the choir, gets comfortable.

Fade in: these poems, pulling their atoms

together for a brief burst of fission:

“BANG! / BOOM!”

This poem is from issue 40.1. You may purchase a copy here.