“It may be profligate, but is it not life?” asks Lord Byron. This is poetry with an edge. Combining grit and grandeur while mingling religion and sex, science and spirituality, this intense examination of life reveals the author's struggles with the nature of reality and existence, in language both simple and complex, erudite and approachable. Showing influences of Bukowski, Poe, Cohen, and a tinge of Greek mythology, the author examines wonder, pain, love, and fantasy. "The Lizard and the Tamarind" is a stirring tribute about the death of a fellow poet. "Explanation of the Universe" does a good job of fulfilling its goal. "Square-Breasted Poem" is a quirky romp through anatomy and modernist painting. A strong and diverse volume that addresses themes with which we all grapple. [These poems] are highly personal, experiential. Some of the experience seems to be supremely private. But what struck me most about them was the free association of the images, the kind of free flowing exuberance of the visual. The intensity of feeling is superior.... Their complexity is almost painful.... I was moved, confused, astounded, curious, excited. -- Ann Beals, University of Central Oklahoma As you would imagine in a collection called Terra, these poems will take you places. They compel you across varied planes of the mind: love, dreams, wonder, mourning. But how diverse your journey encompassing the night-beat of a flaneur, the death of a light bulb, a bricklayer’s manifesto, a film noir dream, the spirals of a lover’s earring—and an explanation of the universe. With wry metaphor yet steady vision, Fletcher spotlights the quirks of human longing and the enigmas of memory. Open it anywhere and you will find a memento to take with you. -- Eva Bednar, Humber College, Canada Explore these samples for a glimpse into Terra. A TOURIST SEEKS ROME Above the cobblestones in a lost park among the ruined statues a headless couple lock in eternal embrace they are without names their passions carved in rock their gowns have become leaves and vines growing, dying, blowing away the mouths of their souls seek lost lips of flesh and marble rivulets of sinter fill crevices like shadows leaves blow beneath her thighs and under his shoulders their dead bone opens on the stone divan as I fall between them our limbs combine tourists record the details how we flickered for an instant like a match in the rain HALLEY’S COMET When the moon is red as satin and larger than the myth of Halley's comet when silhouettes of elms meld into the night at the edge of its circumference and our earth becomes black and empties itself into me I smile in the crimson dark and search my pocket for a penny to rub, a wish and throw I AM A BRICKLAYER My hands are calloused from the bark of brick, the furrows of the palm stained with mortar dye the powder from every sack of cement clogs my pores I crawl behind the wheel my boots caked with morning mud and imagine the comfort and quiet of home the embrace and taste of her flesh pulse of the shower the sigh of warm socks on wet toes and awaken to the distant tinkling of pans and moist aromas like the back of a Cairo cafe No longer am I tied to the day tomorrow the ache in my back will have dulled tonight I do not commit suicide by hangover, tonight my mind is free to glow like the orange halo of the kiln where bricks are born