Welcome to Guardian Angel School

<p>Winner of the Finishing Line Press 2019 Chapbook Competition this sharply observant powerful poetry collection explores the mysteries of connection and loss: the ways we co-exist love and leave.</p><p>Leaping and swerving Jody Winer’s poems move across centuries and species: from an alligator farm lake to the moon’s dry seas from a stalled subway car to a 7-Eleven parking lot from the garden of Eden to a burnt apple orchard.</p><p>Welcome to guardian angel school: “Expect scant correlation between love and safety.” The nation is haunted by “flickering strip malls and the Rust Belt’s forlorn fortresses.” We are expert at denial: “Though we know what’s missing/our eyes still see complete trees. To live/we self-deceive.” Grief “makes you write/your dead friend’s name on the grocery list.” What to do? These poems implore us to be curious ask questions pay attention. As any student should.</p><p>Big answers are scarce but small signs of hope abound. Light shines through dark times: “infrared visible ultraviolet X/raiser of spirits…. our daily bread sign of warm bed/and someone home.” Death looms but so does love: “As hours kill chimes make fireworks.”  Imagination transforms: “There’s still time./No end to invented light.” So why not “Picture a Mount Rushmore for Women”?</p>