No one wants to live in the ElderGrove Retirement Community, but Carol Ann DeFazio is doing her best to make it home. If only her own weren't such a mess, and if only the corporation that owns ElderGrove weren't such a pain in the ass, and if only someone wasn't killing her residents, one by one...

Poems good to read and think about contained within. Have at it.

The poems and images in this emblem book are in some way concerned with the word "fire." Please take necessary safety precautions.

This is the story of a series of bad decisions involving ice cream trucks, Al-Qaeda, bibliomania, college towns, qat, needle-nose pliers, unhappy policemen, glow-in-the-dark bocce, black swans, the witness protection program, frozen pizza, and the CIA (or maybe it wasn't the CIA). Not necessarily in that order.

Marc Pietrzykowski's sixth book of poetry licks the wounds of the mangled poetry puppy god, genuflects in appropriate directions and postures, gives thanks to our linguistic facility, and performs all the other gestures poets need do with aplomb. Not so much an exercise in snide absurdity as one might suppose from this description, Straddling the Sibyl includes poems for the modern workplace, fragments for Claudette Colbert, and a long essay in verse about the effects of modern social networks on the way our brains perceive our bodies. I think you should read it, and so does Marc. With a pastry, in hand, if possible.