The Last Two Seconds

The eagerly awaited new poetry collection by Mary Jo Bang, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award We were told that the cloud cover was a blanket about to settle into the shape of the present which, if we wanted to imagine it as a person, would undoubtedly look startled— as after a verbal berating or in advance of a light pistol whipping. The camera came and went, came and went, like a masked man trying to light a too-damp fuse. The crew was acting like a litter of mimics trying to mak