Cl Bledsoe

Trashcans in Love Cl Bledsoe

The poems in CL Bledsoe's fifth collection are at turns funny and tragic, self-deprecating and deeply personal, as readers have come to expect from the author of the autobiographical collection Riceland. In Trashcans In Love, Bledsoe continues to write about the Arkansas Delta of his youth, where "we were...all looking for a place/to stick our hearts for safe-keeping" while "the boarded-over windows/of our mothers' eyes watched from graves half dug/but not full yet." Ultimately, "we aren't looking/ for tomorrow, only an eternal today."