"Five puppets confront circumstances beyond their control with patience, cunning, and high spirits ... Shut up in a trunk by a taciturn old sea captain with a secret, five friends--a king, a wolf, a girl, a boy, and an owl--bicker, boast, and comfort one another in the dark. Individually, they dream of song and light, freedom and flight, purpose and glory, but they all agree they are part of a larger story, bound each to each by chance, bonded by...

A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection--a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form--small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement. These poems take stock of who...

"Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told that he was a 'do-nothing' because he lacked initiative. Dispirited and unemployed, it occurred to him that if he was so good at doing nothing, perhaps he could turn it into a business. And with one tweet, he began his business of renting himself out to do nothing. Morimoto, aka Rental Person, provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. Sitting with a client undergoing surgery, accompanying...