Rikki Santer delights in wordplay fresh as a “criminal cream pie,” about odd moments in life and imagination. Witty and wise, she’s alert to the news and new ways to riff on everything from her stray cat Betty (Boop) to Mom and Pop Tart, pig snouts, Picasso, Stephen Hawking, and the fate of our planet. In her newest book, Santer gives as life’s only road map, a memento mori, a warning to be prepared for death that may come in the shape of custard donuts and ham grenades from a table she “cannot live with / or leave.” Death might be a sudden sinkhole, a speeding car on a rain-slicked road, an asteroid. She suggests we study “the clouds of starlings, / how they manage uncertainty with consensus.” In her capacious educator and poet mind, she suggests that we “dodge and tuck and roll under the whirling death / girder. …do the trick you pose you smile—applause.” This Rikki Santer does. —Kathleen Burgess, author of What Burdens Do Those Trains Bear Away
Three Poems from Boop Boop a Doopin’ Sequence
“Hay(na)ku Dispatches From A Food Tracker”
“Ginger Rogers’ Feathered Gown
“How to Cohabitate with a Kaleidoscope”
“Wig of the Bride of Frankenstein” & “Launchpads”
“Vegan Dreams of Meat” & “Uncle Max’s Deli”
“The Gastromancer Feeds & Feeds”
“Darci Lynne in the Making” (see page 20)
“Primer for a Press Conference Wardrobe”
“Camus Schools A President: A Cento with Passages from The Plague“
“Her Self Portrait at Saks” and “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets”
“Waiting in the Home Depot Parking Lot”
“Alteration Love Finds,” Ouroboros,” “Pro Bono Messengers in Baltimore”
“At the Fashion Museum,” “Buttonhole,” “How to be a Maven”
“Double Vanitas” (audio via Golden Walkman)
“New Year’s Eve, Still Single With Twilight Zone”
“Dear Twilight Zone Episode Starring Me”
“Gift Shop at the Museum of Fear”
“What I’ve Learned from Ambrose Bierce”
“Some Fun Facts About Berries” and “Leavings”
The Ventriloquist Dreams Blank Verse
“Andy Warhol’s Buffet of Thoughts at the Kahiki Supper Club; Columbus, Ohio”
“Lunch With My Analyst” (audio)