DANCEHALL

Stobierski offers a book of poetry about queer relationships.

The author explores intimacy in this collection, which blends natural phenomena with human emotion. The speaker begins with a direct address to the sun, “low over the hills, / red and ripe and / ready to become” (from “There are days I question the sun—”). He describes the excitement of meeting a new love interest and reveals the vulnerability he feels when trusting another with his heart. “These cold nights” recounts a sultry winter rendezvous between lovers “two tequilas deep,” and the soundtrack of a kiss triggers a childhood memory in “Melody.” Hunger for touch and carnal pleasures are recurring themes: “Press into me / as night / presses / into a canyon,” the speaker urges in “Want.” In the aftermath of a lover’s quarrel, a speaker watches his partner peel an orange: “it wasn’t until then that I realized / just how gentle you could be” (“The night of our first big fight”). The poems also effectively mourn love lost and examine how time doesn’t necessarily heal wounds of former relationships, and these poems are both tender and sensual. A date “smells like cut grass / and gasoline” in “Apolloniad,” and such natural elements add layers to the rich sensory detail; In the hands of a lover, the speaker becomes sweetgrass in “Bounty”: “Harvest me by the handful; / tear me out of the black earth. / I am yours, as much as you can hold.” Stobierski also manages to capture all-encompassing desire in lines such as “I ache to be spoken— / to cling to your lip / and fall from your tongue” (“And like a word”). In addition, many of his metaphors and similes are truly original, like “Your love gripped me / the way thirst grips a throat.”

A vivid portrayal of love, sex, and desire using natural imagery.