When I Pick Up My Wings from the Dry Cleaner

~~ Winner of the 2013 Blue Light Poetry Prize ~~ Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have appeared in Blackbird, The South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Crab Creek Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, "The Insomniac's House," is available from Dancing Girl Press and a second chapbook, "This is How She Fails," is available from Crisis Chronicles Press. She lives in rural southern Wisconsin. ~~ When I first encountered Lisa Cihlar's poetry, I sensed an electricity in the air, a subterranean movement that insinuated itself up from the ground into my bones. And then I felt flooded, suddenly, with the wonder only great art inspires. Cihlar's poetry is full of muscle and sinew, power and verve, a voice so undeniable that it wraps itself around your synaptic connections and becomes indelible, essential. This is poetry of the highest order, of the most terrific, breath-stripping power. Her music will carpe diem your mind; her characters, larger than life, Swampy Woman et al, will stride as powerfully as some female Paul Bunyan across the marshes of your imagination. Move over, Lowell and Sexton and Plath. A new poetic powerhouse is in town. Her name is Lisa Cihlar, and she will annihilate you then tenderly tape you back together with her sumptuous, rage-filled lines. ~~ -Terri Brown-Davidson, Author, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, The Carrington Monologues ~~ Night noticing is different than day noticing. Hanging right there above the skunk families and potatoes growing in old tires, the moon flirts its light against the silences we're trying to live with. Thankfully, Lisa Cihlar is our agent of folding fortunes in the dark. She finds us the catalpa trees and the one-handed mannequin torsos behind the Shopko dumpster. Her poems scuttle and peer and unpin the world. They tell the truth of what it's like inside the bear of confession. Don't lie there worrying what time the dry cleaner opens tomorrow-take this book outside and trust its frozen stars. ~~ -Mike Young, Author, We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough ~~ Lisa Cihlar believes in yellow. She believes in milkweed, mayflies and monarch butterflies. When she closes her eyes, toads and turtles sneak into her poems. She knows the condiment man and the cat lady and the farmers at the Iguana Café. While her poems wing into town looking for Canada geese, she'll show you how to dance with the wolf. -Ruth Bavetta, Author, Embers On the Stairs