Welcome to Guardian Angel School, (Paperback)

Winner of the Finishing Line Press 2019 Chapbook Competition, this sharply observant, powerful poetry collection explores the mysteries of connection and loss: the ways we co-exist, love, and leave.

Leaping and swerving, Jody Winer's poems move across centuries and species: from an alligator farm lake to the moon's dry seas, from a stalled subway car to a 7-Eleven parking lot, from the garden of Eden to a burnt apple orchard.

Welcome to guardian angel school: "Expect scant correlation between love and safety." The nation is haunted by "flickering strip malls and the Rust Belt's forlorn fortresses." We are expert at denial: "Though we know what's missing/our eyes still see complete trees. To live/we self-deceive." Grief "makes you write/your dead friend's name on the grocery list." What to do? These poems implore us to be curious, ask questions, pay attention. As any student should.

Big answers are scarce, but small signs of hope abound. Light shines through dark times: "infrared visible ultraviolet X/raiser of spirits.... our daily bread sign of warm bed/and someone home." Death looms, but so does love: "As hours kill, chimes make fireworks." Imagination transforms: "There's still time./No end to invented light." So why not "Picture a Mount Rushmore for Women"?