Opening The Black Ovule Gate by Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich

A child’s frightened eyes tiptoe through darkness.”  I’m betting Anne Sexton would have liked that line and many more in this volume, just as she’d admire the carefully chosen verbs throughout  – such as those used to spill the beans of the characters she allows us to meet – dozens of them, including: slanted, nestled, oozing, trashed, shunned, jabbed, and beaten.  These poems will have a fine journey.

–Dan Masterson, Poet Laureate of NY State’s Rockland County, author of “Here We Are”

“The poems in Opening the Black Ovule Gate are confrontations with a family in turmoil. It’s a world of mental illness, emotional and physical abuse and suicide. It is a legacy that is passed on and rejected by the poet who fights back through language in poem after poem. These poems in the hands of this skilled poet are forms of prayer that ultimately equal salvation.”

–Kevin Pilkington, author of  “The Unemployed Man Who Became A Tree”