In the dark alcove of the potato room, the unexpected blooms. The surrealistic imagery in this strange little book takes the reader on an otherworldly descent where pores open like baby mouths, bones flower, and even the Real is eerily surrealized when the narrator confronts death in the mundane of the supermarket.
This poet’s forceful, startling syntax lends to the kind of Japanese-horror film aesthetic where things just “are:” unexamined, unexplained and we must simply accept them in all their dreadful wonder. The random fascination in antique medical apparati, a Foucauldian rigor, the occasional Absolute, combined with an unfussy flow of bare, vertebral prose and a bizarrely twisted narrative make for an engaging read.
Praise for Something in the Potato Room
Sparse and stunning, an addictive cinema unwinds with a lyrical and dramatic certainty. I am committed to its sound, its unerring craft and, above all, a story I just can’t shake. I’d like to thank this poet for twisting my perspective and shoving me outside my comfort zone, for showing me how poems can enter the body and take root. – Patricia Smith
Excerpt from Something in the Potato Room
Underneath the quilt, a red vine
was growing. Slithering.
Crawling up his arm. Sneaky-
snake. Leaky ache. Should I
bring down the shears? The
trimming blades? Or was it
the sort of weed that needed
to be uprooted—dug out, its
white heart held in my palm?
