A new collection of prose poems from Don Thompson, whose seasoned and unflinching eye for the world both man-made and natural offers a vision at once somber, and filled with light:

Think of us as forensic pathologists, amateurs admittedly, up all night poking at unidentified remains we found somewhere—maybe in a church basement or far back in the dark corners of a library: Bones picked clean, stained the color of tobacco juice; hair like a rotted fishnet that used to catch so much light so easily; but no flesh left, not a shred, nothing you could call a corpse. The skull is cracked wide open, legs and arms missing; other than a few fingers, we have only the inexpressibly lovely parabola of her ribs.

— excerpted from “Truth.”