Some Planet

As the title suggests, Mortara's debut collection floats through a murky celestial anywhere, a setting for time travel or for pondering alternate realities where "black holes/ hum b-flat/ 57 octaves down." The astronomy theme lends itself to captivating imagery and language, employed effectively in "blues for a red planet," a moving lament for a lost love (and nod to Carl Sagan's Cosmos). Mortara strikes an interesting tonal balance among the playful, the meditative, and the macabre: "the basement/ salivates like the nile" and "the two of us/ toss around in the stomach of your bedroom like/ we are rotten." Several poems have an element of the interactive; an "experiment" encourages the reader to flip a coin: "heads says you love her and tails says you don't/ flip again to decide the severity of your fresh emotions." Another suggests dividing the deaths listed on the nightly news into columns of "afraid this will happen to me" and "this could never happen to me." There are also poems that incorporate tables, flow charts, and even the design of a child's origami fortune-teller. Underpinning Mortara's games and science fiction gloss, there is a beating heart and an aching vulnerability that is powerful to witness. (Apr.)