Third Winter in Our Second Country

In this debut collection, Rojas writes with lyrical clarity about the dangerous landscape in which these poems are set. From the beginning of the collection, where a "crystal-fanged night" and "unflinching stars" illume a family photo from which so many are "gone already" to the final poem where his "sea of change is reefed with wrecks" you feel the threat circling and impeding. Through this treacherous landscape, though, the speaker in these poems carries us, confesses to us, and speaks truths back to the past in a way that leaves us haunted. -- cover.