these poems are fresh crisp and muscular they are decisive and fearless every object icon or historical moment has a soul with a voice in these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page smartly into the contemporary nowjoy harjo prize citationfrom the piano speaks for an hour i forgot my fat self my neurotic innards my addiction to alignment for an hour i forgot my fear of rain for an hour i was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud