Arrhythmia: Poems Paperback ? November 16, 2021

Probing and elegiac new poems from the author of The Cold and The Rust

Written in the years following the sudden death of a cherished friend, Arrhythmia traces the shock doctrine of grief as it electrifies the lives of those left behind. Alliances shift. Loss multiplies. Poems call out from the body, wrestling the twin impossibilities of memory and meaning in language that is by turns starkly simple and twistingly inventive. A tribute to queer friendship, these poems weave chronic grief (a damaged planet, social injustice) with the stab of a loved one’s sudden absence―of what happens to the vibrant particulars of a life when it ends.

Emily Van Kley lives in Olympia, Washington.