My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range: Poems

By C.P. Shafer

Opening with an ode to the freckles on his father's hand, C. P. SHAFER's debut poetry collection takes the reader on a journey into the mountains of life and the wilds therein. From a catalog of sounds that his father makes while getting ready for work, to a retelling of Theseus which paints the ancient hero as a poster child for classic abandonment issues - each poem is a "saw-tooth landscape" that "unfolds before you / offering / what hasn't been mapped..." Just as in nature there is pain beneath all beauty, C.P. SHAFER's prose pushes up through the mire of suicides, break-ups, and the inevitable betrayals of the body to see passing birds as spilled ink, and fatherhood as a chance to transform the poison inside us into life. "Crush the fragile enough..." the poet speculates "...and the remnants become immovable, that's how mountains are made: cores bleeding to fill the cracks; deformities rising in a universe falling." My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range is a parade of deformities that explore masculinity, mortality, and the slivers of light we might otherwise miss during our brief "bone-soaked waltz with rain."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1388743426
• ISBN13: 9781388743420
• Release Date: March 2018
• Publisher: Blurb
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.0" x 8.0"