case study of a lakefire, by TaJuan Skai

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

A body of art chiefly built on the relentless want to heal one’s inner wounds, case study of a lakefire is a poetic introspection of childhood trauma’s effect on identity, on adulthood expression, how it is inherited not only through learned experience, but through blood, and how all this, along with one bruising love, blurs one’s chaos into something educational, something seemingly impossible, something like poetry, like lake water in flames. This is a safari spanning generations of tragedy, expressed primarily through the lens of father, son, & the absence between them.

Decorated with themes of addiction, queerness, spirituality, & more, case study of a lakefire is lyrically and emotionally dense, most notably in poems like “the oil spill’s prophecy” and “ibuprofen”. This is an exploration of the craft of spiral healing like no other, condensed into a breath-snatching, twenty-something pages of mountainous poetry that will bring you to your own internal waters, thankful for all the days you have survived, alone with a sky that is rooting for you, rooting for all of us, to see the other side of our narratives.

TaJuan Skai is an Ohio poet. They value laughters without walls, conversations traveling nowhere fast, & a white chocolate mocha (with oat milk!) from essentially anywhere. Their work has been featured in Eunoia Review & Bottlecap Press.