Is anything common? Katherine Gekker asks in her debut collection, In Search of Warm Breathing Things.
The answer, in these richly detailed poems, is no.
Gekker is a keen observer, able to unlock the beauty hidden in the ordinary.
An iridescent grackle becomes a symbol of hope, collarbones shimmer like wings.
Weaving images of the natural world with glimpses of a struggling marriage, Gekker portrays life in all its emotional complexity.
Two bees are fighting or courting-- I can't tell which, she writes in To Cast a Shadow Again.
Yet there are moments of joy, the promise of transformation.
My shift billows, diaphanous.
I can seduce anyone tonight beneath fronds slicing like blades.
-- Ellen Bass.
Glass Lyre Press In search of warm breathing things, paperback/katherine gekker
