Love Prodigal

Brimhall follows up Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod with a deep plunge into the pain of love lost through divorce and the slow scramble to recovery. “He…said cold / said crazy said broken, like an owl donating a mouse’s / bones to the barn floor,” observes Brimhall in one of the numerous original and unexpected images she startles readers with as she examines the meaning of love, the weight of memory, and her sense of self. Refreshingly, Brimhall doesn’t fall to rage or ranting but uses the occasion to examine how she’s lived (“Am horny for self-awareness, / a slut for emotional work, and am still unsolved”), examining her flaws and her pain and refusing to take the easy way out (“God, I am tired of fetishizing resilience”). Eventually, “the pain of suffering warms into // the pain of healing” as she celebrates her son, seeks new love, and ruefully acknowledges the limits of a body growing older even as she copes with her mother’s death. What results is an intense flow of loose-limbed, vividly imagined, and deeply felt poems.