Our Imaginary Childhood

<p class=ql-align-justify><em>Our Imaginary Childhood</em> Sara Watson's vivid new chapbook takes on the task of narrating childhood through the offbeat precocious voices of eleven siblings growing up helter-skelter. The mother and father drink and spend whole days in bed. They love us but they have headaches the unnamed central narrator says and later adds Every family needs a storyteller otherwise the family is a secret. The slow reveal of this family' secret pries open the brief compact form of the chapbook. The ending of <em>OUR IMAGINARY CHILDHOOD</em> is worthy of a novella. This is a very poignant and intelligent debut.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>-Lynn Emanuel</strong></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>The magic of Sara Watson's <em>Our Imaginary Childhood</em> collects in coffee cans dirty spoons crows' nests and graveyards. This is a family ghost story where the ghosts are alive playing house or playing dead in a home filled with love and haunted by alcoholism. But in the mailbox or under a rock or beneath a tree there is always a secret password a key to the kingdom of hazy orange kid dreams. Each of these prose poems is a tiny wonder.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong>-Rochelle Hurt</strong></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p><br></p>