“Grenadine & Other Poems” by Les Epstein

Les Epstein’s book “Grenadine & Other Poems” has been published by Alien Buddha Press.

Hardly a Vampire snarl
this colossal waft
plows out the glass billboard,
Americana Shakespeare bruised,
leaving red shard saying ‘La,”
Its ‘Co’ letters swept into
The diner’s windowed corner.

“Grenadine and Other Poems” arrives as both a reckoning and a renewal. Written post-Pandemic yet reflective of different eras before that horrific disaster, these poems shimmer with weirdness, protest, and moments of quiet romance. From the wry humor of “Joint Blessings,” where knees and thumbs conspire with cranky resilience, to the myth-making surreal of “Emu on the Lam,” Epstein’s voice gives equal weight to the absurd and the profound.

Again and again the reader encounters splinter and healing, cacophony and silence. The door opens on memory, on history, on the daily tenderness of living through injury, grief, or laughter. A square one becomes both a pill and a dance, a reminder of beginnings and awkward grace.