The title poem confronts a human ritual of marriage from the standpoint of a wedding photographer. Within the tedium and alienation of the ceremony, the speaker grapples with a strange human hopefulness. In this vein, Stone explores our everyday patterns and customs, and in doing so, exposes them for their complexities. Drawing on the neurological, scientific, psychological, and even supernatural, this collection confronts the difficulties of love and family. Stone rankles with a desire to understand, but the questions she asks are never answered simply. These poems stroll along the abyss, pointing towards the absurdity of our choices. They recede into the imaginative in order to understand and translate the distressing nature of reality. It is a bittersweet question this book raises: Why we are like this? There is no easy answer. So while we look down at our hands, perplexed, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows raises a glass to the future.

    Impelled by metaphor and lilting repetition, Mulberry seeks a sense of the world, and ultimately, finds a sense of the Infinite. Affording continual discoveries, Mulberry is a major work for the new century by an assured and lavishly gifted poet. Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of North True South Bright and Spell, He is chair of the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency.

    Here you’ll find an exploration of pain, heartbreak and wonder at what the world might bring us next.

    Adopting a sunny, genial tone, Dunthorne lures the reader to darker places, exploring death and dread, failure and regret - the 'lounge of our suffering'. Often, he catches us off-guard: a 'whiplash' effect where poems shift from laughter to slaughter in a moment. Impertinent owls, an immersive theatre troupe, ancient men from the Great War and idiot balloonists - such characters dramatise our human fancies and foibles, joining the protagonist in scenarios both humorously bizarre and all-too-familiar. These performances serve to probe and unpeel the layers of the self - all the way down to the raw.

    Turns out Mr Safe Bet wasn’t so safe after all, and life in her small home town of Sweet Pocket got kind of sour. The last thing she needs on top of two kids, a sick mother, a deadbeat ex and a heap of bad debt is for Mr Love of her Life to ride back into town, successful, smart, devastatingly sexy, and all the things that she can no longer be. And it doesn’t help that she’s dressed as cheese. One-time-bad-boy-now-Crop-King Brodie Brown is back in town on a mission of mercy, but he’s keeping his guard up.  He can’t let this town – or the girl who broke his heart ten years before – get under his skin.  He’s seen what working the land can do to people, and he built his business, and a whole new life, in the big smoke far away from the pain and despair of a farmer’s life. But he loved this town and he loves the people, so when Sweet Pocket calls, he answers. That’s just the way it is.But it’s only temporary and it’s only business. Brodie learned long ago that there is nothing left for him in Sweet Pocket but a broken heart and lost dreams. When the town’s future is secure, he’ll ride away again – back to his life and his future, and away from the girl who could make both worthwhile.

    Hailed as “an essential book for those seeking self-love,” this heartfelt anthology lends voice to the heartbreak and healing of our soul’s quest to reunite with whom we always hoped we could be—ourselves.

    Starting there, this extended poem—part art criticism, part history—considers the phenomenon of glass, revealing the strength and fragility of our age in the minimalist style that has won Cole Swensen such acclaim.

    A gay birthday clown lamenting the loss of his beloved dog. An amateur veterinarian keeping watch over his suicidal daughter. And a bikini model with a barnacle stuck to her butt cheek. These are just a few of the characters who populate the quirky, offbeat world of IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D ALREADY BE HOME a world that feels at once alien and strangely familiar. In these twenty-one brief, funny stories, John Jodzio documents his characters disappointment, frustration, and longing for a home that seems forever out of reach. By turns bleak and hopeful, cruel and tender, this is an exciting literary debut by a writer to watch, a writer with a unique and compelling voice. You may think you've read enough stories about penniless gay clowns who can't get over the loss of a dog, but I assure you you have not. John Jodzio is the best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new. --Chuck Klosterman, author of SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS

    99 to be exact. bleeding out to the backdrop of this new cartoon. a woodchuck in a tiny witch hat laughs at you, as you lay down, hands over your chest and think, 'perfect.' and a red light atop a powerline blinks in the distance to remind that there is no end, only one long try, deflate at your own pace. don't fight the freefall. 99 poems to cure whatever's wrong with you or create the problems you need. and yes, you need. im your fucking dad, honey. admit it, or we'll never get out of this alive.

    Gang lords Blanket and Guerilla have been growing their numbers, never beefing until Guerilla decides to expand, thanks to the help of his enemy s own rook. Caught in the middle of this battle from different sides of the track are London and Saint.Spoiled rich Roanoke girl London Royal is no exception to the old saying that every girl loves a bad boy and his ways. When she visits the downtrodden Jonesboro neighborhood of Goodman with her best friends, her privileged world changes drastically with one party and later, a tow-truck pickup by bad boy Santana Black.Santana "Saint" Black is anything but a saint. Caught up in the drug game, Saint is a runner and enforcer for Blanket not to mention he s from the wrong side of the tracks to have his sights set on London.Can they find love in the middle of a kingpin war, or will both fall to the game of the streets?"

    . .Taking as its starting point the classic 'wheel of balance' life-coach model, this beautifully packaged collection of extracts and short poems gathers wisdom old and new in a perfect gift for anyone who needs comfort in this f**ked up world of ours.'This is not a poetry book as you know it, this is a life raft.' Emerald Street on Poems for a World Gone to Sh*t.

    Replacing the slim volume which introduced Stevie Smith to American readers, New Selected Poems is chronologically arranged and contains 165 poems along with many of the author's doodles.

    The Last American Valentine is a unique anthology of non-sappy love poetry and flash fiction. Poet Laureates, rock musicians, actors, famed prose writers and a few talented American barfly's have been handpicked, hunted down and crammed together with an artist the world has never met.

    Gibson. The pages explore hurt, healing, love, forgiveness, self-discovery and the journey towards becoming a woman. Written in four chapters each piece encourages healing and the journeying of self.

    I read his work with awe and admiration.”—Ben Marcus “Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' . . . But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary—a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible.”—Cal Bedient This clear-eyed new work from a favorite young poet is searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Joe Wenderoth’s determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness. “Luck” So a screaming woke you just in time An animal’s scream, or animals’. What kind of animal it was doesn’t matter, and cannot, in any case, be determined. The point is you are saved. Your mouth has been opened. Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore and is the author of five books of prose and poetry. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.