“With skulls piling up poem by poem and poetic figures like vampires, ghosts, zombies, a ‘snake bone hag,’ and a singing ‘raccoon-witch-cannibal-monk,’ Sy Hoahwah has perhaps invented Comanche goth. In his distinct ‘sinister-bent’ humor, Hoahwah claims the landscapes of Oklahoma (‘Indiahoma’), the Ozarks, and other hinterlands. . . . These poems are ‘like butterflies released by the breath of a vampire,’ as horrifying and familiar as they are beautiful and rare.”—Heid E. Erdrich, author of Little Big Bully
“A cabinet of curiosities; a descent/ascent into otherworldly realms that can only be described through the forensics of poetry. Keenly imaginative and deft, imagery-rich, these poems combine iconography and artifacts with an omniscient peculiarity, and at times a downright creepiness that asserts itself viscerally, which is to say, in the very best and most thrilling of ways—like I stayed at the haunted carnival too long.”—Tiffany Midge, author of The Woman Who Married a Bear: Poems
“Each word, letter, line break in Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride grows teeth. Each sound in the mouth is barbed wire or wine or a river of snow. The poems dress themselves in smirk, fox skull, and black cloaks to lightning through memory, land, and family.”—Jake Skeets, author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers: Poems
