Love Junky

Aimée Mackovic's sensual, often formal poems look backward to note "The sun / never climbs the same way twice, nor is it meant to," and forward to beg "bruise me, life / any way you wish / that I might conquer / myself and others." Here, there are moving tributes to New York and Paris and the poet's family of origin, but mostly these are love poems to the self-"relax, Mackovic," "my heart me," and "Thank you / to my voice, my stomach, my spine..."-in tender defiance of how young girls so often have the uniqueness and spirit conditioned right out of them. A literal heart is "malformed" under a doctor's scalpel," a figurative heart has the "sequin flare" of the Tin Man's reward, and a beloved childhood doll is a "silent anchor / stringing all your yous together." For a speaker who nearly never spoke, Mackovic's poems celebrate existence in rich visceral detail, lay bare her bloody, beating essence to remind us that we're all love junkies of a sort-and what on earth is wrong with that?
--Stacia M. Fleegal
author of Anatomy of a Shape-Shifter and antidote