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A collection of poems envisioned as a magic wardrobe of mirrors, vast with ocean and meadow, revealing reflections of the muses, a deer woman, and a sea-monster lover.

Forever Mistaken for Ourselves tells a story of transformations. Iron dresses, veils nailed to an hourglass, and a sex-changing flower/human defy or define a woman and her place in daily life and history. Queen Anne's black lace leaves holes open for a ghost. Never just coy, these characters and artifacts get up and do battle with complacency, in an all too often misogynistic world. Beasts come and go through the mirrors, a fish-man breaking through to deliver a whole-body kiss to a woman. Forests rise, and lawns “lean lethargies” to hold the reflected images of the speakers. Is there a confirmation of existence? “If she is—a silver say-so.”

In Full-Time Mammal, perception becomes both subject and site of excavation. Rennie Ament wrestles with what it means to be awake and aware in a disorienting world. How are you supposed to know what you don’t know? As ancient defense mechanisms fail, the brain must be retrained, and poetry becomes a divination tool, a game, a portal, a potential weapon, a way through fog.

Survival requires becoming a poet-cum-scientist. Drool becomes data. Ants carry thoughts to rot beneath earth. Animals, plants, and objects are not symbols but companionate presences. This collection feels its way through the failure of imagination at the heart of preordained systems, turning to the natural world not for refuge, but reinvention.