The Boys I Borrow

the long version

Originally, I titled it Nintendo Wedding but the publisher didn't think that was legal. I still think of the book as Nintendo Wedding. I love poems that are clear, direct, generous, and personal. I like to feel like I'm in someone's house, poking around unsupervised. My influences or inspirations for writing came from Sharon Olds, Naomi Nye, Marie Howe, Beth Bachmann, photographer Sally Mann, memoirist and musician Amy Fusselman, Abigail Thomas, the state of Florida, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing. The narrative poems in this book are strung together to make a kind of very slender novel, the story of a marriage with step-kids, and in the background, people try to cook dinner and beat Zelda. There are a few flashbacks, just like in a novel, to 1970s central Florida, a provocative landscape with levels of its own. - Author's website.