Anodyne

Anodyne is a collection of 30 original poems that begins with "Tiny Explosions," a recalled conversation about what had been the innocuous fun of making marshmallows rupture in a microwave, but now suggests the breakdown of a relationship. These poems allow multi-voiced narrators to consider the qualities and textures of loss and pain, sometimes self-inflicted, and how to move through them. The shift between the first and second half of the collection is paralleled by a shift across time and borders: present-day Central America, 1917 for Mata Hari's execution in France; 1971 after Eva Peron's corpse arrives in Madrid, and present-day Juarez Mexico, where the murders of hundreds of women remain unsolved. Successive narrators are employed to bring readers closer to, and provide them with a better understanding of, these women and their bodies as they allow strangers, siblings, and lovers close enough to help them heal.