The Bicycle Year

The second full-length collection from Cabrera (Flood Bloom) documents a year of her life with a stylistically amorphous approach best defined by its objectivism, stream of consciousness, and quirky existential tone. She personalizes the quotidian through her hyperactive explorations of universal connectedness and provides a variety of means through which readers can better access the subtextual world of their imaginations: wry humor ("when you are in love/ you think all animals are kissing/ until one bites the other on the throat"), delightful conceits ("In truth, I know you are five stingrays swimming around an obstacle in a necessary kind of formation"), and all-possessing nostalgia ("I want.../ to look at pictures of myself/ and be able to picture my mother/ or alternately mistake myself/ for a toddler covered in leaves"). Cabrera is prone to rambling in order to find the soul of a thought, and she delves into thoughts that feel less whimsical than arbitrary. Nevertheless, she succeeds through her ability to enliven the inanimate (she cries "about the color of two bars of soap disintegrating together") and convey the depth of the most basic gestures ("she wants to give Roberta something, even if it is simple-potato"). (Feb.)