The Clerk's Tale

All of the following 18 debut titles will be published in time for National Poetry Month this April. While the title poem is familiar from its recent publication on the back page of the New Yorker, the biggest chance of a breakout for Spencer Reece's The Clerk's Tale rests with Reece's street cred: he is an assistant manager at Brooks Brothers in Palm Beach. Those looking for the male equivalent of Deborah Garrison's A Working Girl Can't Win may be momentarily disappointed in the fact that few of the other poems work as critiques of working life and store culture, but should be buoyed by lines like ""You are being born. Feels good./ Something enormous kisses you.""