Echo Borealis: Poems for Ecstatic Visionaries Exiles Outcasts Madmen & Hopeless F*cks who Are Nonetheless Filled with Wonder

By Jalina Mhyana

WHITMAN WOULD HAVE SALUTED THE FEARLESS WAY MHYANA MAKES A SORT OF RELIGION OF THE SENSUAL. From a suite of poem-prayers and curses written on the poet's solo pilgrimage across Europe when she was homeless (following deportation from the UK and exile in Italy) to a requiem for civilian casualties at Hiroshima; from a meditation on the etiquette and life span of grieving to a crown of sonnets about a miracle cure using dreadlocks to raise the dead; from porn found in garden catalogs and in church pews to an abstract poem of war-torn Afghanistan where her spouse was deployed - each stanza diffuse as the grenade thrown in her husband's path; from poem-medicine prescribed by medieval poet-priests to peeling back the palimpsest of Florentine art history; from a paean to the demons within us (the criminal tangled soul) to the gods within the chrysalis who shiver off their skins. Mhyana's poetry has been called dark, naked and raw, poignant, political, rogue, irreverent, and sexy. Take a look at these random lines and see if they resonate: Echo Borealis: "Iridescence tumbles smooth from the northern lights like meteorites - earth seeded with sky. We've called the heavens down, tied them to our necks like gods." A Piedi Nudi: "I shed pilgrim footprints like medieval sins within Lucca's city walls. Is this exorcism or penitence dragged along Roman roads? This is my survival: all candles burned low between soul and skin. This is my demon suit, my body hell." Baptismal: "Fluvial voices say turn, turn... my skull in their hands, polished smooth, senseless, the way the stone of a peach is round and round the tongue washed." The Cry Catcher: "Crying in to the neck is difficult as pumping milk into two-ounce bottles. I stopped nursing when my girls bit. When tears have teeth, I'll wean them." The Wishing Bones: "If we had no need to distinguish ourselves from others, we'd shrug this skin that defines lovers and enemies and opens itself to both." When I Was Still an Animal: "Before I hid my creature and took sharp thing inside - bramble of fang, thorn, nerve like mistletoe in my gut with the criminal tangled soul..." We Are Gods in the Chrysalis: "Let trees stand witness and stones hold their breath. Let feathers stroke wild skies in reverence..." Shadows & Stone: "Women remember in the nude, imprinted with kimonos' silk weave fifty years later: pigments turned flesh, cherry blossoms fresh as love bites..." Rx: "Each malevolence has a cousin that heals it. I fancy Hurtsickle and Heartsease as herbal enemies - the bite and the balm in balance."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1728800781
• ISBN13: 9781728800783
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"