Filibuster to Delay a Kiss

Family was a whitewashed, / milk-toothed word / that couldn’t account for the mother / who wept and burnt / the roast if the floor was dirty– / or if it was Tuesday, or there were clouds.

Written in an eloquent and searingly honest voice, these poems address the pain and pleasure of growing up. Courtney Queeney tells intense emotional truths in poetry that is at once personal and universal. She exposes the rawness of a complicated relationship with her mother–She mothered the disorder in me, / this difficulty getting out of bed / and dressing like a real human adult, / trying not to be her daughter–and her attitude toward love expresses both profound longing and erotic dissonance: I translate love from the hush of a hung-up phone / before a body comes to engage me for an hour. And Queeney writes with humor and self-doubt of the conflict between desire and the quest to remain true to oneself–I will fly around the world on an airplane until I arrive at calm. / I will spend my days suspended in air, manufacturing a closure.

Filibuster to Delay a Kiss sounds a new and distinctive note in the symphony of young American poets.