Event Boundaries

Ossmann's (Anxious Music) latest explores the connections between love and death—and their centrality to life—while weaving a tapestry of associations. The poems are beautiful and subtly witty, complicated and deceptively honest: "grief like an ocean/ we're afraid// we'll never reach/ the shore of—// and no lifeboat sailing/ toward our vale." In language that is deft and intelligent, the mostly free-verse poems are peppered with internal rhyme and have an overall strong sense of sound and rhythm. In "Infidelity," the narrator says: "I never stopped to consider/ its less illicit pleasures:// its syllables tumbling so readily/ off the tongue, the tongue/ slapping lightly, repeatedly,/ the roof of the mouth, the mouth." References to nature, music, and pop culture abound. Even "Mayhem's Meditation" reminds readers that they are powerless against "those forces," but they might as well get on board and enjoy the ride: "but as far as the mayhem itself goes,/ you're alone with whatever your god/ … gave you."