Wal-Mart Orchid

by Judith Sornberger If only we could—can we?—connect to one another and to the world we’ve been given as these poems connect, then “the brief campfire of our laughter could call others who are...trying to find their way by knife-glintthrough our cities, to create a tribe and language out of gunshot and graffiti." — Sornberger writes with grace and tenderness of the many things that divide us, such as class, gender, and education, and the small things that bring us together. . . of the empathy that is possible in the fragile moments when our lives intersect, even against the depersonalizing backdrop of commercial monoliths like Wal-Mart. — In beautifully lyrical language, infused with clarity and insight, Sornberger takes us inside this most American phenomenon, reminding us that we are all connected, perhaps most deeply when we imagine ourselves apart. These are poems the world needs.  — The speaker patrols a daily life of frustration, conflict, casual hostilities and ever-mounting culpability, but she refuses despair. . . and continue(s) her necessary mission: “to keep seeing what cannot be / and spreading its gospel.”—