IcarU.S.A., by Joe Roberts

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Between the pages of this chapbook, you’ll find volatile protest hymns, poems of rage and disillusionment, an apocalypse heralded by the return of Johnny Appleseed, and a sonnet of despair over the poet’s complicity in the atrocities the United States is inflicting upon Gaza. The collection is more than a travelogue of American hell, though. It is also a desperate call to see beyond the faustian worldviews which have damned us. If this country can grow more human and learn to love the humanity we share with our neighbors, the poet contends, we might still forsake the doomed path our ancestors laid before us. Falling short of this, we will burn for our hubris, our cruelty, and our greed. Written over the last ten years, the 20 poems collected in this chapbook capture the breadth of one poet’s anger and grief from across the harrowing decade since the 2016 presidential election. Joe Roberts is a Salt Lake City poet. His debut chapbook, Anathema, speaks from the confluence between sacredness and profanity to find redeeming beauty in a world that can so often feel cursed. Anathema was published by Moon in the Rye Press in 2024. Joe’s poems have also appeared in Tiger Moth Review, Arlington Literary Journal, Juste Milieu Zine, Caesura Magazine, and the Moonstone Arts Center’s 2024 anthology on human rights. With his free time, Joe writes music reviews for SLUG Magazine, takes communion at local coffee shops, and hikes the Wasatch Front with his partner, Brooke.