May Apple Deep

Poetry. "Michael Sikkema's May Apple Deep, both sweet and tart, is the pastoral for our time. Filled with the energy of opposites, with 'a gangsta soundtrack' where 'overpasses / become sniper towers,' is a book length lyric punctuated by grids or fragments of the grid—like structure. Electric and challenging, quietly terrifying in places, trying to break through ('trespass') 'all this noise,' desire ('household magic') makes a run for it and, in the end, wins out."—Norma Cole