HATE, DANCE, by PJ Lombardo

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Dripping with photographs in the unforgiving wind! HATE, DANCE sharpens its scope on the alienation embedded in contemporary American life. A speaker wrestles cyclically with bitterness, confusion and the scarcity imposed by hostile architecture. Sun Opener tea was traditionally prepared by leaving a bowl of water mixed with fresh flowers in the sun for a day, at least. Now- the commons are gone.

Each of these poems applies a crystalline lens to the fragmentation and precarity that corrupts everyday life. HATE, DANCE does not offer an end to suffering. Instead, this sequence seeks to explore the tactile, emotional and political contours of that suffering. It is an invitation in your own vitriolic cloud.

PJ Lombardo is a poet from New Jersey. He holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he worked as a publishing assistant for Action Books. Currently, he lives in Baltimore, Maryland and co-edits GROTTO, a journal of grotesque-surrealist poetry. Read his writing in KEITH LLC, Mercury Firs, The Quarterless Review, Lana Turner Journal and elsewhere.