My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range: Poems

Opening with an ode to the freckles on his fathers hand C. P. SHAFERs debut poetry collection takes the reader on a journey into the mountains of life and the wilds therein. From a catalog of sounds that his father makes while getting ready for work to a retelling of Theseus which paints the ancient hero as a poster child for classic abandonment issues - each poem is a saw-tooth landscape that unfolds before you / offering / what hasnt been mapped... Just as in nature there is pain beneath all beauty C.P. SHAFERs prose pushes up through the mire of suicides break-ups and the inevitable betrayals of the body to see passing birds as spilled ink and fatherhood as a chance to transform the poison inside us into life. Crush the fragile enough... the poet speculates ...and the remnants become immovable thats how mountains are made: cores bleeding to fill the cracks; deformities rising in a universe falling. My Fathers Hand Is a Mountain Range is a parade of deformities that explore masculinity mortality and the slivers of light we might otherwise miss during our brief bone-soaked waltz with rain.