My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range

Opening with an ode to the freckles on his father's hand, C. P. SHAFER's debut poetry collection takes the reader on a journey into the mountains of life and the wilds therein. From a catalog of sounds that his father makes while getting ready for work, to a retelling of Theseus which paints the ancient hero as a poster child for classic abandonment issues - each poem is a "saw-tooth landscape" that "unfolds before you / offering / what hasn't been mapped..." Just as in nature there is pain beneath all beauty, C. P. SHAFER's prose pushes up through the mire of suicides, break-ups, and the inevitable betrayals of the body to see passing birds as spilled ink, and fatherhood as a chance to transform the poison inside us into life. "Crush the fragile enough..." the poet speculates "...and the remnants become immovable, that's how mountains are made: cores bleeding to fill the cracks; deformities rising in a universe falling." My Father's Hand Is a Mountain Range is a parade of deformities that explore masculinity, mortality, and the slivers of light we might otherwise miss during our brief "bone-soaked waltz with rain."