Books published by Burrow Press

"In Ariel Francisco's Miami, invasive lionfish are sympathetic spirit animals, the beach succumbs to sea-level rise, and "305 till I die" is a cry for help. The speakers in these hilarious and melachonly poems depict a rich and varied emotional landscape that mirrors that of the state they long to leave, dead or alive. They imagine themselves standing on ocean garbage patches, contemplate the crabgrass on traffic medians, and envision the new beauty of a submerged Miami Beach: "Famed art deco replaced by fire coral / and colorful parrot fish, neon lights / restored by pulsating swarms of moon / jellyfish, lit up like a Saturday night." In one moment the strange becomes familiar, only to become strange again in the next stanza. Taking inspiration from Campbell McGrath and Richard Blanco, among others, Ariel Francisco's second book of poems deals with climate change and the absurdities and difficulties of being a millenial Latinx in the Sunshine State."--

A single mother rents a fundamentalist preacher's carriage house. A pop star contemplates suicide in the hotel where Janis Joplin died. And in the title story, a train engineer, after running over a young girl on his tracks, grapples with the pervasive question-what propels a life toward such a disastrous end?