Present and Future Storm

By Lisa Lewis

Poetry. In poems both personal and subtly political, Lisa Lewis launches her eighth collection with the experience of a seasoned "watcher of the skies" and tough survivor, but without losing a single sweet note of the music that is her genius with words.

Says Ralph Burns, "These poems are stays against unexamined suspicion, floodwaters of bigotry and homophobia, mudslides of complacency. They ask that we help fill the boat, grab some boxes, open them again, let them breathe 'to test the air.' That is what these poems do - they test the air. Neighbor McSwain drives by and waves 'like he wants to be / my friend, ' but an old reluctance, the automatic assumptions take hold, a look in the eye which isolates and dams. With the relentless rain 'and the trees slipped down / from the sky' also comes resolve, even tenderness, hand-holding against the rising water, blacktop slickening, disappearing, a 'blue husband on blue sofa with ripples and silence.' Lisa Lewis asks what's important: 'What's the matter with all / of us? So much trouble for so few people, lost / and uncertain across short distances?' Here's a dam and a boat, volunteer first responders, in such profound disorder, a sestina Couplets Here's a rich sound system amid chaos, rainwater 'nowhere to go but up.' This last couplet, by the way, is wonderfully reminiscent of another Lewis - 'we're here where the simplest shape of human touch doubled - what we call the art of love - is baked into the art of trouble.' This, friends, is a book of 'good trouble.' This is Lewis of the storms."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1946276030
• ISBN13: 9781946276032
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: Word Works
• Length: 92 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"