like a trifle

In the opening to his collection of poems IS 5, E.E. Cummings writes, "If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little--somebody who is obsessed by Making."

It's an excellent point. Writers are creators. We can't not do it. Even if we try. We build words into sinew and bone, breathe life with verbs. We twist the world to suit us.

And sometimes the world twists back.

You can see that twisting in the latest issue of THE LINEUP: POEMS ON CRIME, edited by Gerald So, Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez, and R. Narvaez.

These are, after all, poems on the horrible things we do to each other. Out of desperation, anger, sometimes even love. Joy is subverted, hope bent back in on itself.

Take Coleman's poem SLIDER, PART 7 about wartime murder, which ends with an image of bodies buried one atop the other.

"Layers and layers
like a trifle"

And like all great poetry these are all layers and layers. Nancy Scott's THE SHEARLING is as much about a boy stealing to survive as much as it is about young love. Paul Hostovsky's poem STEALING THE BOWLING SHOES isn't, as he says in his opening line, about the shoes, but about oh so many other things.

As with previous issues of THE LINEUP, the editors have collected a vast array of talent, Ken Bruen, Stephen Jay Schwartz, Steve Weddle, Keith Rawson, Kieran Shea and many others.

You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.