CISTERN LATITUDES IBD

Sinopse

Cistern Latitudes: small descents into spaces and moments that once witnessed tectonic shifts in destiny that are now as silent and still as subterranean pools of water, clear and dark and carrying the truth that life and the world may have lost its way, that tragedy may linger in the corners of our past, but there are still latitudes and geographies out there that harbor safe, calm, and magical futures if we look for them.ááJames H Duncan is the editor ofáHobo Camp Review,áa former editor atáWriterâÇÖs Digest,áand the author ofáProper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, Both Ways Home, We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, Vacancy, Nights Without Rain,áandáTributaries,áamong other books of poetry and fiction. He resides in upstate New York but travels widely to review indie bookstores for his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more of his poetry and essays, visitáwww.jameshduncan.com.'The poems ináCistern Latitudesáare infused with the elements-rain, fading light, oceans, snow, damp wood-as they affect and reflect discordant human relationships, reminding us love might not last, but memories linger.áThereâÇÖs a place where sunsets never quite go away and dawn doesnâÇÖt come, a place on ruled paper, history scrawled in pencil in cursive.áThe subjects in the poems are half shadowed, half lit. Indoors yet exposed. Together yet disconnected. Half asleep. Trapped behind window glass. Struggling to rectify constructed human lives against a natural world they both adore and fear. Straining to sustain love knowing full well it is ephemeral, inconsequential.á[T]he sun sets and keeps setting, a tidal wave of night crossing the globe...bringing exhaustion and loneliness to small rented rooms, bringing light pollution to endless downtowns, bringing 10,000 people to...an airport terminal, a jet stream of strangers using the same space to rest, to regroup, to move forward.áThe specters of stone, water, earth are ever-present-supporting unreliably from below, gurgling with discontented erosion.áAre you there now?/am I? alone as the waves overlap?//ghosts conjoined by time and place,/the dacite rocks, igneous volcanic//as you were, as you forever are.'-Kerry Trautman, author ofáUnknowable ThingsáandáIrregulars