Gutter

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Part of being a good squatter is learning to inhabit any space to find a home in anything. The poems of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Gutter</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Lauren Brazeal's debut collection do just this: inhabiting each form given whether game card pieces checklists stolen police evidence and letters or redactions sestinas and sonnets. The story told from the perspective of a young girl surviving as a squatter on the streets of Los Angeles and based on the author's own experience with homelessness as a teenager bounces in time and perspective from the not-yet-homeless child to the panhandling sprite to the mournful survivor. More than the narrative of a single person </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Gutter</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> speaks to the struggles of those who have been cast aside as irrelevant or undesirable by mainstream society.</span></p>