Bypass

Dave Malone's poems insist we pay attention to the real workings of an unraveling world. Here he makes magic from a no-look pass, the quick drag from a Winston cigarette, and the "bullet holes in the shed." In Bypass, Malone writes the heartland as he knows it-the complications and simplicities, the victory and the elegy-then dares us to try and forget what he's shown.

-Elijah Burrell, author of Skies of Blur and Troubler

The poems in Dave Malone's Bypass brim with stories of loneliness and desolation, taking a last stand in an empty farmhouse or in the beautiful sadness of a full night sky over an empty cornfield. With an eye for the natural world and a dark sensibility, Malone's poems are lovely and uncomfortable imaginings, a Southern Gothic assemblage that dares to ask, "What if?"

-Holly Day, author of A Book of Beasts and The Tooth Is the Longest Bone in the Human Body

Dave Malone's Bypass is good for the soul as he signals us off the freeway of our busy lives to drive down the arteries of neighborhood memories, such as "the postal clerk / delivering the best and worst of news / to war widows and would-be lovers," soccer, and teachers past. We have to slow and roll down the windows so we won't miss a scent or the music coming over the rooftops telling us that good things are bound to happen soon.

- Mick Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, The Heartland Review