The Runaway Poems

Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs's The Runaway Poems explores unremitting trouble with both wrenching compassion and irresistible lightness of touch: Grandmother says "at least he didn't steal our cows... he only left for a while...." These poems whisper and sing homages and impossible lullabies--for a son in grave danger--for Rosina "away forever / from her sons.... melted away by guns / at the green valley apartments..." but especially perhaps for any parent of troubled men--those "nimble tourists of pleasure, / triumphant thumbs of the future, / trained by gameboy...." Here is a poetry woven strong of all the irony we crave, that allows us to speak our pain and grieve as well as speak our love and endure. —Ken Weisner—