BUSY BEING EVE

A chapbook of poetry focuses on a kaleidoscope of memories, challenges, and experiences.

Morris waxes poetic about small moments with power, grace, and beauty in this collection. “Slight” hints at a departure “on a March morning when you whooshed / right out of my life, backspace, backspace, / backspace.” She considers human nature in “Side by Side,” concluding, “Maybe love is mostly assembly, bit by bit.” The titular poem details a woman’s painstaking recovery from pneumonia, which seems to incite an existential crisis. A mother lingers over coffee and the newspaper, gossiping about boyfriends in “Another one in the pen.” “Lean” is a writer’s manifesto in which the speaker directly addresses poetry and declares: “I’ve got to be startled out of / my indifference, stowed here in my office chair. / A poem has got to make me stand up or else.” A 5-year-old boy injured during a Superman fantasy gone awry is the subject of “Early Impact.” “Paris, 1988” juxtaposes the author’s experience in the City of Light with her veteran father’s memories of leaving that country in the back of an Army truck after liberation. Morris writes of “waiting for donkey work to end” and wondering what preceded a soulless office building in “Night Season.” Even quotidian happenings, such as remodeling an extra bedroom or a cat coming home with a dead bird, garner their own poems. No word is wasted in this slim volume. Morris’ poems will hit readers like a punch in the gut—quick, hard, and unforgettable. She stimulates all five senses as she recalls “the swoosh of the heat pump,” “the old clock’s patient beat,” and kitten heels that “rattle like ice.” A kitchen counter becomes an “overturned boat,” while the memory of a beloved’s kisses is “like fresh snow.” Describing a creative writing professor, Morris writes he “smoked in bed and drank on his feet,” and his eyes were “no longer the crystal / lakes that had lapped the edge of childhood dreams.” Even a seemingly silly poem about a “fuzzy lollipop” becomes sly and sensual under the author’s pen.

A vivid, impressive collection by a dynamic poet.