Prayers from Crooked Spines

The twenty-six poems collected in this book are petitions, each one more urgent than the next. Fear is said to be rooted in the spine, yet the severing of its silver cord will paralyze the inflicted. Is supplication the only recourse? Perhaps, but “the body is never a silent witness. It would rather cat-scratch an arthritic limb than falsify an aura.” PRAYERS FROM CROOKED SPINES confronts “the creeping ivy of the brain,” takes aim at the “thorns at catatonic nerves,” and transforms emotional trauma into “something entirely wonderful and new.”