Invisible: Poems and Aphorisms

"Invisible," as the title suggests, is an exploration of things unseen, formerly seen, and then seen again through the powers of memory and imagination. The word turns, like a wheel (literally) throughout the book (paperback version only). In a series of very loosely related poems and a potpourri of aphorisms, the reader is guided on a journey through a variety of strained, failed, and sometimes humorous personal relationships; imaginary wars between poetry and prose, and the absolute necessity of love and kindness. The hum throughout the work is the Donohue's voice reflecting on our unrelenting experience of getting older and heading towards eternal invisibility.

This ever changing, ever turning wheel of the invisible spins through the book's aphorisms as well, but it does so in surprising ways and topics, like clothes: "I'm grateful for clothes. Without them, nakedness would just mean nothing," and balls, that are hit "so hard" they disappear and "land in another sport."

The idea of approaching death appears and disappears in this volume, until Donohue confronts it head on, in one of the last poems in the book. Having imagined that death has entered his home through an always unlatched kitchen window, he witnesses the spectacle of death complaining of hunger and peering in his refrigerator for "spongy white bread and mayonnaise" to make a sandwich.

If you've ever wondered what happened to someone you hadn't seen in years, only to have them "reappear" suddenly and fully in your imagination, due to something as simple as the color of a curtain, or the faintest fragrance of a perfume, then you'll be glad to have "Invisible" appear on your bookshelf or device.