Arrhythmia
Emily Van Kley

Written in the years following the sudden death of a cherished friend, Arrhythmia traces the shock doctrine of grief as it electrifies the lives of those left behind. Alliances shift. Loss multiplies. Poems call out from the body, wrestling the twin impossibilites of memory and meaning in language that is by turns starkly simple and twistingly inventive. A tribute to queer friendship, these poems weave chronic grief with the stab of a loved one’s sudden absence—of what happens to the vibrant particulars of a life when it ends.

“Emily Van Kley stunningly entangles elegy with ode, reminding us we stand apart from nothing—not our beloved dead, nor the passionate and natural processes of life.”
—Alexandra Teague

“These poems are shimmering and musical and gorgeous on the page, where they maneuver like a woman suspended in silk, or made of it.”
—Maya Jewell Zeller

Emily Van Kley was raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula but now lives with her partner in Olympia, Washington, where she writes, and teaches and performs aerial acrobatics. She is the author of a previous poetry collection, The Cold and the Rust.

Paperback / $15.95 (Can $21.95) / ISBN 978-0-89255-539-0 / 80 pages / Poetry