After Forgiveness, by Alayna Powell

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Your ex is a bird. A turtle. Half-priced at PetSmart. Your houseplants are hoarding knowledge and sending mixed signals. Desire is a ghost in your home, and the rooms are bare, and the window open, and always, you see a deer out of the corner of your eye. After Forgiveness is a testament to all that love takes and leaves behind. Journeying between past and present, obsession and spite, Powell’s poems meld dream with reality in an attempt to imagine an after. A mother heals from cancer. The drug use slows, and then stops altogether. But when it is all over, where do we put our toes, tongue, teeth?