Declarations of Hunger

<p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>How can a thing glint even as it's still? Ask Reed Smith. He speaks the dying language of morning light rivers burlap shadows and coyotes' early barks [...] slapping flatwater inspects all our dust and rot and manages yet to marvel. Reading </span><em style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>Declarations of Hunger</em><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)> felt like slipping along in a secret canoe deep in a landscape of grief and tenderness where the marsh hawk stares back and truth always makes a curve. I think we can trust this voice-its intimacy as much as its restraint. Smith's poems get good and close enough to hear the rasp of snake scales and to be honest about what a man sees in the mirror. To warn us about fingers in the hourglass. To test every door.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>-Allison Adair author of </span><em style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>The Clearing</em></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>Smith reminds us that until we can divest from our massy entailments our dis-eased and loculated bodies persist with their sad animal hunger drawing sustenance from the nitrate- and blood-soaked earth. America remains mostly fields-even as we marginalize them in our digitally obsessed cultural imaginary-ravaged by weather and industry where Fermented / in Disneyworld bacteria embryos fasciculate / in polluted foam. These poems combat the trivialization of our food's origins and the fates of our waste knowing the earth is a record of our devastations yet our hope for survival.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>-Joe Fletcher author of </span><em style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>The Hatch</em></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>Some poetry slows time to a crawl the intonation of an image or phrase a kind of musculature developing right before your very eyes. You can sense the perspiration the struggle of becoming each breath thickening the air. Drink its water / and the universe expands invisibly / inside you. Spirit is a thing we make unto ourselves and </span><em style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>Declarations of Hunger</em><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)> is full of spirit. The world teeters on its fulcrum and Smith takes note a kind of bravery in witness. This man's heart hits you like an ambush.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>-Joe Pan author of </span><em style=color: rgba(85 85 85 1)>Florida Palms</em></p><p></p>