Kevin Nolan. All Over Susan.

Sparked in the televised scorching of the Balkans, this elegy locks in the spectacular general distress of violence, destruction and emigration on the losing targets of intimacies particular to death, personal loss and corruption. All over Susan's passion implicates investigative realism by testing the reflexes of description. It combines judicial sharpness with sweet lyrical tenderness. A stunning and moving book.

1-903488-07-9. 1999. 16 pp. £3.00 / $6.00

Leafwork in Pale, 1-9.

if you made us equal I would go

see her partly wake to spread
in chalk in rose her fingers curl
the cold life spent will fail her then

on floating straw by rack and pin
the bunched nerves do not mend or
sign that way the Earth is blinding

look backwards there no single frame
nor leaf to splinter at the edge
here there is ample reckoning

or count the darkness limb for limb
in Drina doorways limb for limb
past credit: parts unlistening