budding in the blue light

In budding in blue light we find ourselves in a landscape where "corner lawns fade from grass to gravel" and the dreaded school bus is transformed (as only Coonan can) into "That yellow beast crawling through dawn." Here is an origin story as told by a man about a boy in that time of life that is "The clamor of ungrown // bones." In poems that swerve through the sensory and swarm with sound, we travel from boyhood to adolescence when "You might crash & burn // Or you might take flight in her eyes." Raw emotion rides these pages where the first experience of "grief is a Mack Truck" and unattainable Jordan 14s are "edged in varsity red // like a slab of uncut rubies." Families fracture, friends are a "spectacle of spilled quarters // & tricep flex," the boy-soon-to-be-man wonders "What will take root once high school melts?" In this coming of age story Coonan captivates the reader while capturing that chapter in all our lives when "-our bodies glittered like small gods of fortune." I say Bravo Coonan. Bravo. - Miranda Beeson, author of Wildlife and Catch & Release