Repaired by Jenny A. Burkholder

“Here are poems filled with women we recognize, almost: Eve with a thimble of tequila and cigarette burning her fingers, Dorothy in red high heels and a Rolex, mothers with warnings like cocked fists, daughters defiant on motorcycles-all working out their own kinds of repair. Here are domestic places that feel familiar- and yet. Living rooms are lonely and strewn with cut paper; kitchen tables have blank faces; bike racks are to hide behind. But there is also the pageantry of backhoes in front yards and John Travolta dances under a mirror ball, radiant, in that kitchen. In language selkie-sleek, each line surprises. Sensuality radiates- redbirds like the curves of throats, scent of lemons, cigarette smoke lingering-and tensions abide-Eve, with her unusually fluent tongue, is wordless. Reassurances come-soon, my love, I will be home-but they arrive at the wrong address. A child fragrant with fury hears something like hope through the world’s cracked tiles. The repair in these poems requires splicings and reweavings-of our bodies, of the language needed to tell the complicated truth. These poems are, indeed, a boat you have been sent. The ride will be precarious, but they will keep you afloat, alive, and wide awake.”

–Mary Lynn Ellis, Abington Friends School English teacher and co-author of With a Poet’s Eye

“Burkholder paints a dangerous world in these lush poems, but it’s leavened by grace-a scent of lemon at the ending of the year, which feels like permanent end; skin flaps cut in surgery that are compared to Buddhist flags; the clavicle of the medical report becomes “those lovely hollows.” Embroidery takes the place of the excised breast, and in that way conveys acceptance that is clear-eyed, insistent on the beauty of the body as a way of resistance.”

–S.L. Wisenberg, author of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch