Stilettos in a Rifle Range

Amore, immutable fatale, thickens the Cincinnati air, steps over lawns swaying its limbs to and fro in warning to loiterers who'd believe that Williams's verse rests on the ballot of human expectation. Lines billow, curl, and swirl. 'We'll break your lousy heads. D'ye think you own this world, or what!'

~Andrew Levy, Author of Artifice in the Calm Damages

A seasoned author looks back to his uncomfortable days as a newly credentialed academic relocating from Detroit to Cincinnati. His girlfriend has recently dumped him and he feels unwelcome anywhere outside his university. Encounters in restaurants, discos, dives, and bus stations intensify disappointment and alienation. The poet's voice echoes love poetry of Ovid and the old, stand-up routines of Williams's favorite comedian, Richard Pryor. With caustic charm, Tyrone Williams explores a host of attitudes, vocabularies, and emotions, fulfilling his promise 'to honor the Black vernacular in all its troubled poignancy.'

~Edward Morin, Author of the Bold News of Birdcalls and Editor and Co-Translator of the Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution