When the Body is a Guardrail

<p>Set along lonely highways the voices within <em>When the Body is a Guardrail</em> are restless and searching—these poems are seeking new ways of seeing of being of interpreting what it means to be human. Too often we treat life like a highway like an 80s rock ballad as both distance and a bridge speeding towards some vast unknown donning knee and shoulder pads shin-guards and helmets learning “to pull on flak jackets” and “to tread with stealth” that jewelry “jangles like an aftermath of traps.” We want to be close create intimacy without risk but fail. And when we fail we cannot forgive each other or ourselves. The truth is we drive into the morning light forgetting that experience will change us by the time we drive home through the evening sun. Each time we change we become a new person versions of ourselves that are never fully erased. <em>When the Body is a Guardrail</em> doesn’t hide from disappointment or failure that “soft-wet empty snow already understands.” This collection begs us to pay attention: to the isolation of routine and small towns; to our allegiance to beginnings and endings but not to the journey itself; to the addict inside all of us. With eyes on the horizon we are always looking for that bliss that Eden that perfection and we are always failing. However these poems are testaments to our resiliency because despite all our flaws we keep trying we keep trucking along with windows rolled down and radios blaring.</p>