Tyler James Davis

POEMS ABOUT...being alone, old coins, meatlovers pizzas, how doors in my dreams never work, bookshelves from IKEA, grocery shopping as a form of meditation, junk drawers in kitchens, being religious but having no faith, coal, how the beach town you've visited since you were a kid seems to never change at all ...AND MORE YES I want 12 issues of CONGRATULATYIONS Magazine delivered to my door for $9 instead of the $12 I pay at the newsstand. Each issue is filled with unrhyming semi-prose "poems" about things that make Tyler so overflowing with sentimentality that he has to spend $125 on an ISBN and publish a book about them in order to otherwise function properly.

The Pharaoh Khufu built the pyramids for himself, so I think I'm allowed to write a second poetry book. The poems in this book are a little bit more personal, not in the "I reveal juicy controversial childhood secrets" kind of way, but in the "why are you even telling me about these banal childhood anecdotes" kind of way, and I mean that in the best possible way. It's about pro wrestling, feeling butts, rituals becoming routines, cats, potato chips as a metaphor for love, Slavic food, buildings in Mahanoy City that got torn down 15 years ago, and how kids from Mahanoy Area are jerks. Do I have your attention now? No? Oh. Ok.

A collection of 26 poems about relaxing when you can, rebuffing others when you need to, and reminiscing all of the time. These are not the kinds of poems that go stanza after stanza without actually saying anything, nor are they the kinds of poems that have really weird enjambments (except a couple, but it's nothing too crazy). These poems aren't about unnecessarily serious topics in an unnecessarily serious tone. If you're a fan of naps, the feeling of taking off slightly-soggy socks when you get home from work, or the jubilation when someone else cancels plans which were getting in the way of you doing nothing at all, then these poems will hit home.