The Doppler Effect by Marla Melito

Sometimes it takes language of haunting, uncanny beauty to make ugliness and brutality starkly apparent. And sometimes it takes images of disarmingly modest simplicity and clear-eyed precision to render the after-effects of great trauma on the bodies and minds of its survivors. The poems of Marla Melito‘s The Doppler Effect employ both these strategies to stunning effect. She takes horror too huge to imagine whole, let alone to allow ourselves to feel, and hones it to a heart-piercing edge. I warn you: these poems are not only beautiful but also keenly intelligent and absolutely devastating.

–Jennifer Atkinson