Chapbook Reviews
Most of us are eccentric, when it gets down to the writing of poems. Perhaps the finest thing about Kevin Zepper’s poetry is that he simply writes about what interests him—fortune cookies, flannel pajamas, vending machines—without trying to frame it in craft, theme, artistic vision or political ideology. His latest chapbook, I Bring You Dead Things (Blue Light Press), is a shoebox full of curious objects. Placed next to the above-mentioned items is a poem about eggs, an address to Linda Blair, a visit to Marilyn Monroe’s former house, a dream of being a fig in Carmen Miranda’s hat, and the title poem, where Zepper realizes all he brings his lover (flowers, a fur, perfume) are dead things. A shadowy “she” forms a presence throughout the collection, endowing these odd, sardonic poems with a much-needed pinch of romance. From “Eggs Over Easy”:
I’ve folded your jeans
over the chair next to mine.
I’ve never folded my jeans before.
Did I sleep as soundly
as you do now?
Meanwhile, in “A Nod to Lorca”, a woman asks Stash Hempeck if he is happy.
Yes, I say, I’m happy.
Happy, she says.
Very happy, I say.
Your poems are so dark, she says.
Although this and other poems in Hempeck’s chapbook Coming of Age are not quite as dark as the book’s black cover suggests, we can see where the woman is coming from. Still, through the haze of personal and public bitterness (divorce, American greed and consumption, the war in Iraq) we can glimpse some beautiful natural scenery. In “Haiku—Survival” Hempeck notices that:
On the crunchy snow
a rabbit eats bark until
my garden next spring.
- Joel Van Valin