What is the national anthem of the country Andrew Merton inhabits? I think I hear ukuleles, and "the off-key bleats of a cracked bone kazoo" riffing out its tune. The music reminds us of the taste of five tart bites of a last peach, of our mother's ashes, of a galaxy blooming in a worn wicker basket. Relish these poems that will linger in your ear like a lover's cry. In the motherland of our broken and patched human minds, Merton sketches time's passage in lines as fluid as "a leaf in an uncertain breeze." Most of all, Merton teaches us to be a poem at any given moment of our lives.

--Jeanie Thompson