Perfect Teeth is a collection of poems.

This thesis consists of a collection of poems: two thematic-translations that engage source material for their composition and two anaphoric poems. “A Seeson in Heckk,” an epyllion (or mini-epic), engages Arthur Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell," as it echoes his syntax and translates some of his themes into a portrait of a troubled young speaker familiar but strange to Rimbaud's. “Love Poem,” the first anaphoric poem in the collection, explores the arc of a relationship through surreal, bizarre, and lyrical images that chart the experience of falling in and out of a tumultuous love affair. “THE BOOK OF CLAY” is composed in relation to “The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.” These poems form a surreal, pastiche, thematic-translation of the early American's accounts of her experience during the King Philip's War. “Transplant: Final Lines from a Poem Titled, Cardiology” also uses anaphora, while it explores emotional identity, authenticity, and an overused poetic trope: the heart.

Each poem here wants to be alive. Each in her own slot of earth thinking of the larger plant from which she is a cutting. The larger plant is rooted in time and health. Here are twenty-eight single rhubarbs clicking together. The rhubarbs are a drawer full of handles. Take one up and see about it. You'll notice the foods do not grow with grace. They happen out of curiosity and stubbornness. The foods, they grow up just to grow. Thus, outlying rhubarb in places. Thus, hard clusters requiring patience for the getting through. Rhubarb-thick and crisp and wet-begets rhubarb. If a patch feels like a gang, just knock. Or try around the back and through the yard. Each plant here is in mild to medium danger. Or not. Thus, forth a reporter who takes the shape of you and I. She takes with her a pen! She practices our language but does not lick the dewy, English stalk. Instead, she chews it-a circulating handful of well-fed words. Through osmosis, lunch sinks in. Through osmosis, water. Speedy would be the speech were it elegant, but it is eager. Less in sense but still in awe and admiration and undeniable willfulness. Too, there is the doubt. Here is a record of starts, of nourishment, of heartiness, of growth. It could feed the plants like peels. The foods strange but friendly.

This collection contains poems written between September 2013 and March 2015. In that time, the author has ceased to wear deodorant for apolitical reasons (no fear of cancer from those wonderfully smelling sticks!), has been to foreign countries at least twice, taken looks at carcasses rotting in the streets of the devastatingly wonderful Sonoran Desert, and often pondered why parking garage security guards do not let childish adults linger in their sheltered emptiness. All things necessary for creating horrible poems of boredom, loneliness and reflections on the picking of boogers. It is strange how the accumulation of years in a body's life continually widens the so-called mind's eye, especially for one who is interested in writing things down. A writer walking through the dream of life and inventing its reality. Truly life is an awful experience, but sometimes there are a lot of people out in the sun enjoying a fine spring day and a fly lands on your hand (and you know it's pooping on you) but in that little creature and that little moment there is contained all the love in and for the world which can cause a smile to bring out that one little dimple on a handsome face. Sometimes we like Sunflowers with our torture, and that is just fine. Sometimes we feel more alone being among happy partygoers and sometimes the Red and Green Apples in the grocery store sexually arouse us; these are the moments the poems contained in this collection were birthed from. Ryan Mills: Gone Now, Have Fun!

A collection of poetry that primarily deals with Appalachian voice and environmental issues, navigating queer identities in rural spaces, and violence against the female body. / MFA

This lyrical narrative charts the particularities of a childhood. A mind that is preoccupied with how to negotiate loss; the fear of a family sickness waking up. This piece is arranged with section titles that are designed to give an episodic feel. Each serves as a different method of entering into loss.

Take Me With Your Shovel is a collection of poems that explore systems of oppression with an emphasis on psychiatry and law enforcement, the slow crawl of catching a break as a member of the blue collar class, the monotonous side of working in pop music, drug abuse, and finding God in the midst of it all--salvation through sin rather than salvation from sin.

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