Shirtless Tattoo
Once in a while in this collection of poetry, you’ll come across a piece that’s a little too clever for its own good: “in a contracting universe/be sure you are well rested/everyone you’ve dreamed of/is headed for your bedroom”. But most of what you’ll encounter in Shirtless Tattoo is full of glorious images, images carefully placed within the context of the simplest of moments, so that what you wind up with is breath-taking: “I know/that love/and freedom/are merely/grains of sand/upon a beach/that is a fingerprint/of land/that has been/swallowed/by an ocean/that is mist/within a sky/that could not/fill a lung”. (KS)