Crucifixes: & Other Friday Poems

“Only my contradictions hold me upright,” claims one of the poems in this ferociously lucid and often funny new volume by M.F. McAuliffe. On the one hand it batters us with Lear-like bleak assertions (“Time and heaven and earth are stones. / They grind us between them”) — assertions it goes on to illustrate, most impressively, in the final series of poems retelling the Orpheus myth. On the other hand, the very rhythm, almost reassuring, of other aphoristic conclusions suggests an admiration despite everything for the world it so passionately curses and condemns (“to walk through the city and know it for rubble— / This is a dream as old as the soul”). — Luisa Valenzuela, author of Clara, Strange Things Happen Here, The Lizard’s Tail, Black Novel (with Argentines), and Deathcats

This book takes the reader to ancient Rome, straight from the mouth of Catullus to the person sitting right beside us. McAuliffe makes these poems relevant to everyday life in the present, yet channels ancient memories; reminding us that some things are eternal and can never leave our consciousness. —Amy Temple Harper, author of Cramped Uptown