my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store, by john compton is, among other things, a clear-eyed examination of the body, its hungers, desires, shames, and pains. It's a book of desires fulfilled, thwarted, and manipulated. The poems explore "my body," "his body," "your body," and "her stone body." Bodies that are "mercy," "burning," "rakish," and "dampened." They are manuscripts in which life is engraved, or poems spilled out of autopsy with stories that "carved poetry into my back." There are "dirty boys" and "sadistic cum stains." For compton, sex is both burden and gift, its fluids and actions work like spells that transform the speakers' wounds into incantations of survival. A "new body . . . instead of stretch marks, / . . . has a multitude of hieroglyphics / scratched across its walls." In love with the language his body has held and both born and borne, compton's poems resonate with a deep pulse of the indomitable life force of a survivor: "the naked body a rosary / bead tucked in each wound."

Subhaga Crystal Bacon, author of Transitory, shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award