Equipoise: Poems

In ""We Grow Accustomed to Dark,"" the first poem of her second collection, Halme cruises down ""the black sash of river,"" past the detritus of the old South, the crass commercialism of the new, and through to her own more intimate memoirs of ""the cotton shop/ where we bought summer."" Seemingly on an extended, coastal vacation with her ""polite Southern husband,"" Halme uses her moments of repose to both deflate and celebrate bourgeois life, where ""a whalish blimp chubs by/ to tell us where to eat tonight."" Her graceful, self-aware lines well capture ""full beauty/ in moments, in flashes,"" particularly in ""When the Sea Laughed Itself into a Foam,"" an eerie, near-sestina on seeing a new house overcome by the sea. Elsewhere, she muses on sexuality (""The Wanton, Harmless Folds of Dreams"") relationships (""Antidote to Adultery""), parents and vegetarianism (""Girls/Metaphor/Meat""). Poems like ""Beignets for Breakfast"" can yield to a too-clever academic literalism, where ""this town is lush with hummingbirds/ whirring a larkspur blur/ of long reflexive verbs,"" while others ground themselves on shoals of generic abstraction (""in the night that isn't night""). But pithy, entertaining riffs on adult life are Halme's forte, and there are plenty of them here: ""The genius baby licks pollen from a gardenia/ her father holds out for the pretty neighbor./ All give in to deliciousness."" (Nov.)