jericho, by Annie McManness

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Let’s say one were to think of a lamentation for innocence, a moon in a monastery window, the peculiar silver of rain racing, and institution-issued blueberry waffles. Eventually, the mind would conjure something similar to the contents held in Annie McManness’ debut poetry collection, jericho. Praying, fasting, mimicking the mystics: this is Alice’s world, seen from the cloister of the psych ward. She is neither here nor there and is definitely not long for this world. She is an ache in the shape of a girl. She is a hope, a dream, a nightmare, a memory, a warning. But mostly, Alice is a yearning to see the face of God. The only things standing in her way are a stranger named Jericho, her own fallen nature, and those goshdarn blueberry waffles. Annie McManness is a student of the transfiguration of suffering—the innermost symptomologies of the soul. Sometimes she studies this in poetry. Mostly, she studies this in people.