A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs

In the lava flows of Vesuvius and on the slopes of the volcanic range of Oregon, Chuck Carlise maps out the history of personal loss in such evocative detail and with such tender regard for the fragility of the present, that we, too, are caught unaware and overwhelmed by the nervous erasure of grief. What does one unearth from such a Pompeii? Objects of beauty, shards of hope. Obsidian. Paintings on the brothel walls. A bouquet of lace. Reminders of the way in which memory endures. An unbroken field of blue. -D. A. Powell, Kingsley Tuft Award Winner for Chronic: Poems