Time Loss - by Alex Gallo-Brown (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Alex Gallo-Brown, dubbed the poet of the service economy, is back with a new collection of poems that poke and prod at this fraught American life. Building on the critical success of Variations of Labor (Chin Music Press, 2019), Gallo-Brown sees life through the eyes of a parent now, and his fears find new subjects in the tear-gas-stained streets of Seattle:

At night, I look out at pears

glowing bright against dark leaves.

I try to shut out images that sting:

our daughter, much older,

clad in military fatigues.

Gallo-Brown encounters faces full of rage and cities afire with school shootings as he drives his daughter to school. He feels her tiny, forceful heartbeat as she pulls his hand close. The former union organizer searches for a collective good as he and his young family navigate this precarious moment. The result is a powerful body of poems that speak to all of us who wonder where this country is headed.