Just when you think you’ve got your bearings, Kelly Fordon’s poems tilt the floor.

Across the street, a woman/ sits on the patio with her back/ to the sun. All you can see is the/ round white globe of her skull./ She is having some trouble with/ her insides. If you could speak/ you would ask her about the/ people she swallowed.

— excerpt, “The Great Divide”

In Fordon’s world there is no black and white, only shades of gray across the emotional and moral landscape, as in the prose poem where she addresses “The Monster in the Mirror:”

Well, you are a very small monster. I have to give you that. It’s a big world and I wish I had a little rhinestone suitcase. Then I could carry you around like a miniature poodle.

–excerpt, “The Monster in the Mirror”