The Year of Yellow Butterflies

Divided into three parts, this book maintains a dreamlike consistency throughout, utilizing surrealism and primitive, disturbed charm to reveal the layers we hide behind as humans caught up in a cyber sense of entitlement, sharing space with the stars. These poems explore memories, grief, and the way things can remain the same, circle, and stop as we try to fill in the empty corners of our minds. The ever-morphing imagery within stanzas offers a bizarre sense of separation that’s both inventive and fantastical, blurring the lines between nostalgia and what the heart craves right now.

We see the exchange between various binary relationships—right and left, life and death, truth and fiction, past and present, missing and found—through specific elements of childhood and adulthood alike. I was mesmerized by the wit and depth of the poet’s lucid vision and use of sensory detail. She has a talent for lines punctuated by shock value and ethereal endings that keep the reader guessing and wanting more.