Dunk Tank

In the title poem of award-winning poet Kayla Czaga’s sophomore collection, the speaker is suspended between knowledge and experience — hovering there confidently before the world plunges her into the frigid waters of adult life. Czaga reimagines the body as a strange and unknowable landscape, full of cancers that “burst like blackberries;” a butt that could run for prime minister of Canada; and the Cerberus-like sultry eyes of Winona Ryder’s pores. In Dunk Tank, clouds become testicles and uteri turn into goldfish, flickering and fragile, but still ultimately glowing. These are poems of friendship, lingerie, sex, and longing. Not knowing how the world works, Czaga forges a landscape of metaphor and gleaming, dense imagery. Dunk Tank is playful and dark, comic and disturbing.