Kenneth Johnson's Molten Muse crackles with the electricity of nostalgia. In each poem you find yourself in places forgotten: seeing the ocean for the first time, under the gaze of your first crush, lounging in cool grass to look up at stars or clouds while identifying shapes, the pounding of your heart as your race through the sprinkler in your front yard, bathing suit plastered to skin. You find yourself wanting things: the smell of coffee in your childhood kitchen, the taste of your mom's pancakes, that very particular sense of time standing still. I'm warning you now, this is what will happen when you open Johnson's collection, you'll become feverish, begin desiring things you'd long forgotten.
-Shilo Niziolek is the author of
Fever and atrophy