Loss and Its Antonym by Alison Prine

Loss and Its Antonym by Alison Prine is a collection of beautifully paced and confident poems. Poetry has forever talked about love and loss—it may seem there is nothing left to say about them, and many aspiring poets fail to give us new insights. However, individual love or loss is always fresh and new and raw. Prine brings us poems of humanity laid bare and vulnerable in the aftermath of death. She has a strong connection to emotion, the image, and the world. These poems are not just about love or about losing someone, they are about HER love and HER loss, and these are topics that are new to the reader. There is much here to learn. Buy here.

Inside

this hour

a hundred snow geese

landing in a field

inside the field

a barely perceptible intake of breath

inside the breath

a cathedral of doubt

inside the doubt

a shrine of broken watches

inside the broken watches

an hour

this hour

From “Green”

. . . when I first came back after leaving home

all the plants in my bedroom had lain down in my absence

this was how I learned

the past tense of green

From “The Subject Is Not Loss”

. . . I read a letter from my father to my mother

when he was in the Navy 65 years ago—

you said I talk like that

when I unbutton your shirt.

On the shore your face strained

by laughter is washed in sun.

The recognition in our gaze

is cumulative.

Every morning I wake

to watch dawn unfold over the harbor.

At night I crave to go back into

the conversation our bodies have in sleep.