Escape Wheel Has Arrived

Photo: Escape Wheel. Taken by me.

Today my copies of Escape Wheel, the 2020 anthology from great weather for MEDIA, arrived. The cover is unexpectedly lovely in the same way the poems of the preceding volume, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, are. I have been savoring those poems while I awaited the release of Escape Wheel, and I look forward to savoring this volume now it is on my coffee table.

I wrote about Escape Wheel and the poem I have in it, “Elephant in the Room,” here. It is appropriate that it arrived this week, just after my mother’s death, because it is about death (a significant elephant in all of our rooms) and the passing of generations. At the same time, it is strangely fun and whimsical, often recalling childhood play. I felt I took a lot of risks in writing it, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had had a hard time finding a home. I’m thankful to the readers and editors at great weather for MEDIA for embracing its eccentricity, and I hope readers of the volume will follow suit.