Paper Crown

Poet and essayist Christle’s observant latest (after The Crying Book) offers a microcosm of interiority, cocooning inside the mind until something takes flight: “I like it/ when it feels like my brain/ is being licked by the rough/ tongue of a stray cat.” Staring through a picture window into “complicated green,” Christle wanders through etymological associations (“About the hexagon there is/ I think something French. Thoughts such as these would/ each get rearranged. Or I could be conveyed briefly out/ of my life via pneumatic tube”), distractions (“Somehow/ I own like six nail clippers/ and I honestly can’t/ remember ever buying/ even one”), and the place where real and dream lives intersect (“a Venn diagram I will never draw: the circle/ of physical lovers and its slim overlap/ with the circle of lovers in dreams”). Motherhood is a central yet vaguely isolating subject for the speaker: “I wish that I knew more about/ Papua New Guinea or total grief.” Candid and attentive, these poems humorously and painstakingly chronicle the inner life of thought. (Aug.)