Weasel in the Turkey Pen by Marie Harris

“With her first collection in more than a decade, Harris ( Raw Honey ) presents prose poems that move easily and unexpectedly between the real and the surreal. A new piece of dental apparatus reminds a female patient of women being tortured in prisons, then driving home she's pulled over by a cop; a young man leaves obscene messages on an answering machine and in the next work ‘Dali speaks into a receiver that contains the lobster's sweetest meat.’ … Harris works from an exaggeratedly feminine point of view: macho men watch sports on TV, hunt animals and sleep with their students, while women, who comically make coffee for the firemen, end up the real saviors. There is a sense of doomed journey throughout: the tourist in the book's second section searches for a place to feel comfortable, and in the final section, one finds winter, desolation and a dying father.

— Publishers Weekly

“We know a real poet is in charge here, leaning in an ear to the sounds of her world, and not missing much of anything in the sometimes surreal goings-on.” 

— Colette Inez

“(She) has an artist’s eye for authentic, unadorned detail.”  

— Maxine Kumin