Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 134
- Language: English
- Date Published: March 1, 2025
- ISBN 978-1-962847-18-6
Praise
John Bradley’s book of spells begins not as a series of incantations, but of encryptions and admonitions: don’t touch this, watch out for that. Try not to fall victim to podcasts from the asteroid belt. Don’t be deceived by the voices of dream animals or the wail of mechanical sirens. Take care, “because a spell can’t be tricked, rubbed, licked, robbed, kissed, caged, swallowed” without considerable risk.
There is an otherworldly music to this uncanny collection. Poems filled with bits of bone, chemicals, threats, and parts of speech give way to spells of wistful tenderness and forgiveness. But who’s actually casting these spells anyway, whether they’re for us, or upon us?
He could be the childhood friend who remembers “getting seasick on the Cyclone at Coney Island, / but I don’t believe those who say I fainted and flew out / of the car.” He may be the crank on the radio spouting,“Why is NASA hiding our kidnapped children / in colonies on Mars?” And yes, he’s the ex-lover who still dreams of those days “when you were a sapling with long / blonde hair wavering before a door to a place / that exists only when you read this spell aloud.” The witch doctor / medicine man knows your secrets, that’s for sure.
Look, open any page in this book, and I promise you’ll stumble on at least one line that will make you laugh or shiver or trip you out. Or your money back.
—Joseph Gastiger, author of After Forever Changes
Anyone familiar with John Bradley’s earlier book Hotel Montparnasse: Letters to César Vallejo will not be surprised to learn the spirit of Caesar Vallejo has cast a spell on Bradley, empowering him to produce one of the most magical, insightful books of the 21rst century, As Blood Is the Fruit of the Heart: A Book of Spells. This is not a self-help book, though its poems offer some worthwhile instruction. “How to Have Sex in a Canoe,” “How to Tell Someone They’re Slightly Fascistic,” and “How to Live Forever” are a few examples. Readers also witness “sleepers inhaling sleep” and learn “Dirt teaches us how our bodies / pass through thousands of bodies.” John Bradley’s book masterfully presents the incongruities emanating from the extraordinary as well as the ordinary, leading the reader on a journey into a new personal consciousness, built from humanity’s ever-growing collective unconsciousness. —Ken Letko, author of Chopping Wood in the Moonlight
Excerpt
Spell for a Photo of the Moon at the Moment of My Birth
I am six years old. I don’t know who put this open cigar box
on my head. Maybe it was me.
I’m eighteen. At the mouth of the driveway, I’m taking
a photo of the moon with a broken camera. The moon is
naked and nervous and flirty.
I am nine years old. I’m keeping a diary called The Rain Is Not
My Father. My father burns it.
I’m a year and a half, lying inside a wooden cage. There’s
an entity in the hallway quietly saying my name over and
over. I pretend I can’t hear it.
I am five years old. A big dog with a huge mouth chases me
around a car. I climb up on the hood and tell the hairy
beast: Jesus fire come down on you.
I am ten. The face under the cowboy hat is so blurred
I’m not sure this boy is really me. The black cowboy boots
pinch my toes.
I’m thirteen. I’ve just taken my father’s Colt .45 from under
his mattress and buried it in the backyard sandbox. He doesn’t
yet know what I’ve done. I don’t yet know what he’ll do.
I am zero years old, napping in this pulsing pillow where I pay
no rent. My mother says I’ve squatted here for ten long
months. She wants me evicted—now. The moon, as anyone
can see, is full.
Author
John Bradley was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; Massapequa and Lynbrook, New York; and Wayzata, Minnesota. His first book, Love-in-Idleness: The Poetry of Roberto Zingarello, won the Washington Prize, in 1989, and a second edition, expanded and revised, was published by Word Works. Besides writing poetry, he is also fond of composing aphorisms, some of which appear in the anthologies Short Flights and Short Circuits. He’s been a reviewer of poetry books for Rain Taxi for many years. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, he’s currently a poetry editor for Cider Press Review. He lives in DeKalb, Illinois, with his wife, Jana, and their cats, Kiki and Zuzu.
Learn more at: johnbradleypoetry.com.
