The Post-Rapture Diner

"A vampire is being cared for on the shoulder of the/ southbound Golden State Freeway" begins Dorothy Barresi's poem, "Charity." With this- an misheard car radio announcement, Barresi launches into achingly beautiful meditation on human kindness and communication. "How can putting out a van fire/ compare with the humanity/ of bearing one's wrist/ tenderly, shyly, as though a teenager,/ to those stilleto lips." An American Book Award winner and the author of the books "The Post Rapture Diner," and "All of the Above," Barresi's poetry is marked by an unerring empathy for human nature balanced by a gentle sense of whimsy. For instance, in her poem, "When I Think About America Sometimes (I Think About Ralph Kramden,) disparate images from one of the most pedestrian stereotypes in American culture ("To the moon, Alice!") are breathed new life, made terribly and poignantly real. "...picture their lovemaking-/ the sweat he heaved into her with a fat man's/ slog and fury, not/ grace, don't call it grace,/ until their headboard,/ scrolled with grapes and angels in the old manner,/ must have quaked like rails underground." There is no trace of the amateur in her work. In Barresi's formidable hands, words become something alive, and beautiful.