Clockwise Cats Reviewed by David McLean

Clockwise Cats Reviewed by David McLean

Published July 2014

Alison Ross
chapbook review by David McLean
Fowlpox Press, 2014, 14 pp.

Alison Ross’ new short chapbook is exquisite work. The poems are visual and depict a surreal landscape, drowned in dusk and darkness, like a painting by Miró, since Miró is the theme of the book and Alison would like to live in one his painting. I suppose she might holiday in a Cure video, maybe even have nightmares there.

The poems are lucid and to the point, as

The hours rain down
like soft sparkling skulls.
The children catch them on their tongues,
eat them like they’re stars,
and become illuminated time

The poems all point to a more precise realization of the real. By showing how the twilight is time exploding into fat spiders who become fat and replete on the darkness before shriveling like lazy vampires under the cunning cruelty of the coming sun, the reader will be brought to understand the foul essence of temporality, unless she is only reading for the cat references.

There are few poems here, and they are enough. The book rewards rereading, and, like all decent poetry, will contribute to taking away your ontological blindness, or, at any rate, do your myopia no end of good. 

Here is the book of the clockwise crepuscular, whether to gaze at vacantly or steadfastly to purchase:  

http://www.fowlpox.tk/