What Runs Over

About this book

Poetry. Memoir. Born from the isolation of rural Pennsylvania a life of homeschooling and physiological and physical domestic abuse Kayleb Rae Candrillis memoir in verse WHAT RUNS OVER demands attention. Unfurling and unrelenting in its delivery Candrilli has painted "the mountain" in excruciating detail. They show readers a world of canned peaches of Borax cured bear hides of urine filled Gatorade bottles of the syringe and all the syringe may carry. They show a world of violence and its many personas. WHAT RUNS OVER too is a story of rural queerness of a transgender boy almost lost to the forest forever. "When Roethke said energy is the soul of poetry he might have been anticipating a book like WHAT RUNS OVER which is so full of energy it practically vibrates in your hand. Here Candrillis speaker sticks their tongue into the heads / of venus fly traps just to feel the bite then later burns holy books in the backyard and rolls around in the ashes until they become a painted god. This is the verve of an urgent new poetic voice announcing itself to the world. As Candrilli writes: This is what I look like / when Im trying to save myself."--Kaveh Akbar