PETER SCHWARTZ
POEMS
OLD MEN, GIRLS, AND MONSTERS
34 PGS.

Excerpt from Old Men, Girls, and Monsters:

I've always had a certain love for exits
you see a permanent immigrant to more bachelorhood
than strictly necessary, me giving in

to the pollution like weak tea, me as chops and
giant blocks, a paperboy with the taste of ashes
in his friendly fingers or a

reporter with no news, a robot of light
bicycling backwards from the gravity, shirt off
set to kill the haze: I see

exits everywhere, library or restaurant
hospital or airport, roads already tilting towards their
sequels, regeneration in a

black hole, reversed dollars, missing owls
I'm your meaty amnesia, your continuous
last chance, your fire escape:

your super crutch.


Praise for Old Men, Girls, and Monsters:

"Peter Schwartz's poems collect our hard-won confessions, our fragile constructions, our temporary homes and our more permanent losses, but not for the purpose of hoarding them away. Instead, Schwartz organizes these obsessions into new structures--complex and beautiful poems--inviting us to experience their transformations. He writes 'I've always had a certain love for exits,' and yet, what do we have here? Nothing more or less than a collection of intricate entrances, doorways through which to come in together, as celebrants, as mourners, as readers."
--Matt Bell, author of How They Were Found

“Restless and visceral -- the poems in Old Men, Girls, and Monsters howl like prisoners in dark cages as they mutate one's perception of reality from under their bandages and punctured-origami fragility. An intensely gripping collection."
--Arlene Ang

“The suffering which permeates this meticulously constructed collection of remembrances is truly haunting. Schwartz creates an unearthly world where one is embraced by the experience of wounding: if it hurts you, be glad that you can still feel.”
--Alexis Apfelbaum

“These poems seamlessly blend the dangerous landscapes of childhood and adulthood. Even when all seems hopeless, there is a pumping heart in Peter’s world view, offering glimpses of his remarkable pain and acceptance.”
--Meg Pokrass