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“You opened a suitcase full of leaves on my bare feet,” the speaker says in C.T. Salazar’s chapbook of poems, Forty Stitches Sewing a Body Against a Ramshackle Night. The poems are short sketches–no more than two or three lines composing brief sentences. Each one contains aperfectly distilled moment in time, captured in a few brief words.

“How many hearts/beating in tandem at once/birds in the attic.” Bird’s wings and heartbeats are such an interesting parallel. There’s a sense that the metaphor here isn’t the situation. The speaker could be standing in a crowd, or sitting on a bus. We’re not wholly sure, but that’s okay. It’s almost as if we get to choose our own adventure.

In another piece, the speaker says:

“Found/your eyelash/in my favorite book.”

This poem is so tender, and in so few words. The idea that the person addressed has read the speaker’s favorite book says quite a lot about the “you.” That they took an interest in the speaker’s interests (or that the speaker insisted that they read it). The fact that it’s an eyelash conjures up images of butterfly kisses.

If you’re looking for poetry which both enchants and dazzles, this book is for you. Salazar’s poetry is spellbinding. Forty Stitches Sewing a Body Against a Ramshackle Night is available today from Animal Heart Press. You can find it here: https://www.animalheartpress.net/p/purchase-forty-stitches.html