Black Aperture (Paperback)

2013 National Book Award Finalist In his moving debut collection Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother s suicide refusing to focus on the expected pathos blurring the edge between grief and humor. In Outgoing the speaker erases his brother s answering machine message to save his family from the shame of dead you / answering calls. In other poems once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward a flower / of smoldering filaments. A refrigerator holds an evening landscape a tinfoil lake vegetables / dying in the crisper. Destructive and redemptive Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing sorrow and laughter and torment balanced with moments of relief.