AVAILABLE

ISBN 13: 978-0-88971-201-0
ISBN 10: 0-88971-201-8
Price: $16.95
Paperback
5.25 x 7.5 - 80 pp - April 2005

by Matt Rader

on the front porch striking matchsticks with our thumbs
the quick report of light doused out with our tongues,

it’s the trick that speaks volumes: forget phosphorus, friction
the miracle of combustion, it is how you hold fire

in your mouth then snuff it out like idle conversation—

–from “Miraculous Hours”

Book Description

NOMINATED FOR THE 2006 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD

Matt Rader’s debut collection is the fierce and tender retelling of our first “miraculous hours”—those early significant-and-strange interactions with the ones we love and the world we live in. From a world where wild dogs slide like ghosts into homes, water towers are “giant blue bullets unexploded in the earth” and walls are tortured to talk, Matt Rader forms a meticulously crafted reflection on how the events, experiences and environment of our early lives shape our sense of faith, our strongest convictions, and the map of the world we carry with us.