Jen Tynes

Trick Rider Jen Tynes

Poetry. Each augury is moving picture and rodeo. They say that female centaurs do not appear until later, but they are wrong. Each season is scarred. She has other names: Here, Grace, Double, There. Each motion is fuel and air. She has little left for pity. Each I is us. She knows that there is big sky and there is big sky. Each horse is hearse. Time twitches under her feet. Each performance is combustible. She has other names: Fugitive, You, Pronoun, Guts. She whistles a song you can't quite place. Each hearse is house, and each house is body, and each body is language.--Stephanie Anderson

Part rodeo queen, part Mad Max, Jen Tynes' TRICK RIDER somersaults through a trompe l'oeil Wild West landscape made of body glitter and furs. Walking a fine line between performance and necessity, these poems juju a body out of giddy, vertiginous vernacular. Tynes' speaker holds court, dazzles, and menaces: each insistently female body in her caravan is a threat, a trick, a state of emergency waiting to descend. If you are afraid, you're right. Call the trick MUSCLE DANCING or TWO HEADED OUT OF FULL DARKNESS. If you ever want to pass for living again, read this book.--MC Hyland