<DIV></DIV> <div>The poems in this collection inhabit an intimate landscape of basement bathrooms and neighborhood pools, places where the familiar becomes strange: a house burns on an empty highway; Jesus has his portrait made by a hobbyist painter in a linoleum-tiled room.  These poems search out the unseen that exists behind the known, not to erase it by naming it, but to grapple with its presence and power, its effect on all that we can know and see.<BR><BR>Learning about Fire<BR><BR>The sky ratcheted whole over us<BR>on the beach, the stars and the black<BR><BR>all one thing, cranked by some<br>cosmic mechanism.  Someone<br><BR>threw a book into the fire.<BR>It sat unchanged for awhile,<BR><BR>then its green cover drained and<br>the pages began to swell, bloom<br><BR>open, the edges curling back<br>then fluttering—brittle,<br><BR>but out of habit holding on<br>to their old shape, the whole<BR><BR>thing swaying a little,<br>a boat rocking on the water.  <BR><BR>Just as I began<br>to think that maybe<br><BR>it could keep on like this, in-<BR>between, for as long as we could<br><BR>keep the fire going, someone<br>lifted a stick to poke it.<BR><BR>The intention was enough—<BR>the whole form<br><BR>didn't crumble:<br>it vanished.</DIV>