Star Map with Action Figures

How does a sentence // just like that become prayer? Part parable part bestiary part glossary of possible and impossible loves Star Map with Action Figures poem after poem provides an answer. From the space between punishment and its promise Phillips quizzes the thousand churlish faces of desire: two boys making love on a riverbank a horse named Nightmare the self a needle pushed through / the stretched canvas of belief. Star Map with Action Figures counters the bodys certainty with febrile syntax challenging the mirrors ability to capture and the lovers willingness to stay. From the forest that stands at the exact center of sorrow to the cathedral in the speakers mind Star Map with Action Figures charts the severe and glittering histories of intimacy in flux. A king a willow a captain the sea--all themselves more less unsayable and not--become kinds of heroes shattering the myth of a limit to what any story could hold onto.