the cricket on the hill by leah angstman ($5)

A very personal tale, almost journal-like, of the award-winning author's brief time in Denver and Boulder, Colorado, where she lived among friends in a large house, sleeping on a hardwood floor below a window to the misty morning outside. The poetry chapbook recounts the tales of unrequited love; the beauty of the landscape; the music nightlife that yielded an obsession with a dark, mysterious, punk rock guitarist; the marriage of a best friend to a man she didn't love who didn't love her in return; the twists and turns and lies of friends, of friendships dying, and of holding on to whatever you have for however long you can for no real reason and with no real way to do it. Even the title, simply named after a rock club in a hip side of town, shows that this is a chapbook of life in the rawest form, accounts of real people making both honest and dishonest mistakes, growing in the eyes of each other, being strangers in the midst of companionship and remaining friends in the face of adversity. This is also, without a doubt, some of leah's best work to date, with experienced writing that is focused, intense, and staggeringly wayward, all in the same breath.