Prisms, by Eden Arielle Gordon

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Traversing the sacred and profane, the ecological and prophetic, and the real and imagined, Prisms embarks on a journey from New York to California and back again. Written over the course of three years, these poems trace the evolution of both an individual and the collective amidst the seismic shifts of the 2020s while exploring the many deaths and rebirths we all must undergo as we move through time.

These poems traverse cross-country road trips, talking Joshua trees, cosmic cafes, now-defunct San Francisco artist collectives haunted by the ghosts of 1960s idealism, and other mystical, sometimes violent aspects of the American landscape. Climate change and signifiers of decay flicker through it all, emphasizing the inevitability of change while also noting that the nature of this change is not yet fixed.

Blurring the binaries between humans and nature and searching for connection in an impossibly scattered universe, the poems invoke Allen Ginsberg and Joy Harjo as they slip in and out of time, recalling our interconnected nature only to forget it again. Amidst it all, Prisms splices in hints of the transcendence that exist in the cracks when we stop for a moment — the winks of stillness, eternity, and recognition that punctuate our long drives home.

Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York. Her poetry has been published in Humana Obscura, and her journalism has appeared in Atlas Obscura and Slate. Her debut LP, Portals, is forthcoming. Check out more of her work at edenariellegordon.squarespace.com.