The Dangerous Shirt

By Alberto Alvaro Ríos and Alberto Ríos

"Discursive yet aglitter with images, often abstract and yet insistently regional, the ninth collection from the Arizona-based Rios includes something for almost everyone."--Publishers Weekly

"Wonderfully odd, sometimes sad, never predictable... Rios continually surprises us in the way he stretches the meaning of words, turning them this way and that." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"R os's verse inhabits a country of his own making, sometimes political, often personal, with the familiarity and pungency of an Arizona chili."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Alberto R os is... arguably the best Latino poet writing in English today."--Prairie Schooner

Alberto R os's new poems--magical wormholes through mundane reality--create an improbably true space where human bodies fall through floorboards, prickly feelings of limbs "fallen asleep" are stars buzzing under the skin, and ironed shirts hanging in a closet take on a foreboding sense of danger. Together they are a book of magical realism and cultural physics seeking the "also-moment"--the probable and imaginative directions a single moment might become. "Science may be our best way of understanding the world," R os writes in one poem, "but it may not be our best way of living in it."

The shirt in my closet is dangerous.
I shouldn't have ironed it.

Because I have, I will put it on.
If I put it on, I will be dressed.

If I am dressed, I will be drawn toward the door,
The door and not the couch--the door . . .

Alberto R os is the author of nine books of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. He has taught at Arizona State University for over twenty-five years. His book of poems The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body was nominated for the National Book Award.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556592981
• ISBN13: 9781556592980
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"