DEAR TRAVELER 

At night, you come into my bedroom 
as someone else’s idea of wind.

You threaten to shatter the porcelain tchotchkes. 

Still, as I take off into viridian-night, 
you jump into my mouth to settle in my throat. 

You tell me the night hit you on the head a bunch of times, 

       leaving the iron-ore of the bully-house.

Then you, with your night imprinted on yourself
tell me calmly that you are coming with me. 

       O angry traveler, dark night provides the dark gold way.

With all the babbling sounds around us, 
you are a spastic airborne fern. 

I give you credit 
for that translucent golden sheathe you built around us. 

       Thank you.

I give you credit for being a hatching doll inside of me 
with night the littlest baby of them all. 

Expanding her earlier chapbook, Deborah Schwartz delivers a report from the frontlines of our time, part belly-wail, part full-throated praise song; disarmingly plainspoken even as it flips our expectations on end with unnervingly original vision.

The delicious and surprising poems of Deborah Schwartz offer a generous semi-surrealist commentary on a host of grand topics as well as a carefully curated display of personal ones. Bold, funny, and intensely female, Schwartz navigates oceans, skies, and bodies with curiosity and tenderness. This is a book of air and longing, where “watching is a sacred act.” You will find yourself reading it cover to cover.

-Diane Wald, author, The Yellow Hotel, Wonderbender,and Gillyflower

In this stunning collection, Deborah Schwartz explores love, loss, family, and the larger world in a truly distinctive voice. Earnest, at times playful, these well-crafted poems navigate between inner and outer worlds, through speech and silence, toward feeling. To read this book is to sense struggle and, ultimately, hope.

–Lisa DeSiro, author, Labor, and Grief Dreams