Of Covenants
C. Kubasta, please don’t take offense as we make reference to, ahem, country music in reviewing your fantastic new collection, Of Covenants. The plainspoken, country-road cadence and homespun themes lean to AM, not FM, and yet the words, sounds, and rhythms are high-beam, A-team poetry. The author of another collection of poetry, All Beautiful & Useless, and a couple of chapbooks, Kubasta is a small-town Wisconsin native with an MFA from Notre Dame. She now teaches at Marian University in Fond du Lac, WI.
The Covenant of Traffic Laws
We call them country stops, these rolling stops. My brother once
told me
not to wear out my turn signal on the back roads.
In the left-turn-only lane, I rarely signal. It is the left-turn-only
lane.
Turning right, I swing wide, crossing the dotted line.
The fricative’s malcontents: lips, teeth & tongue.
When “improperly signaling a lane change,” I think
I am one step closer to death. But then I think
my whiteness protects me. How dare I think that, I think,I think, how dare I not think that.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
