West Portal

This moving debut contemplates the responsibilities humanity has to both the living and the dead. Gucciardi draws the reader's attention to the relationship between care and its mournful etymology when he writes, "The word care has roots in the Gothic kara—/ to cry out with, to lament." Care becomes a portal through which ghosts may be encountered. The speaker's sister haunts many of these poems, with Gucciardi lingering on quiet moments of care extended to the deceased: "My father's hands/ on my sister's corpse,/removing the ring/ from her septum,/sliding it on his pinky,/ brushing her bleached/ bangs into place." Gucciardi also depicts the city he calls home, San Francisco, as a kind of ghost of itself: "streetlights/ shine down on the tent city across I-80,/ the rain letting up and the clouds/parting, the night swelling with AM/ radio and umbrage as Saturn's rings slip/ out of focus in the telescope I found by/ the tracks and swore I'd finally fixed." Brimming with pathos, this memorable collection finds epiphanies in small moments of grief that connect the living to the dead. (Aug.)