In an interview, Christopher Salerno once emphasized his desire to write poems that startle. “I always hope that my work has ‘heart,’” he noted, “but on top of that I really want to read (and write) poetry that has the ability to startle” (for the full interview, go here). The three poems I had the pleasure of spending time with accomplish both aims: they startle as they reveal their hearts, and they reveal their hearts through their capacity to startle.

One poem that especially embodies this relationship between startlement and heart is “Wimpy, Wimpy, Wimpy.”The poem startles us with its vivid, surprising images as well as its brutal honesty. For example, the speaker confesses: “Once I dreamt//I folded a whale in half, stuffed it inside/a thick black plastic Hefty bag.” This image is both surreal and terrifying. In this nightmare, a whale becomes trash just as whales are killed by trash in real life. The poem artfully mirrors the cyclical nightmare in which trash begets more trash. The speaker is both complicit and heartbroken in a world of “Nesting dolls/of trash mammal trash mammal trash.” While nesting dolls typically evoke childhood nostalgia and play, here they take on a horrific role, revealing how deeply our lives are layered with trash we can’t escape. In the same way, startlement nests within horror, which in turn begets more startlement. And so, despite all its darkness, the poem ends with the dazzling, haunting image of a pearl.

Part of the heart and startling nature of these poems resides in their vulnerability. In “Glamour Marmots,” for example, the marmot is both a victim of human waste and a foil for the speaker who wonders whether a kinder, more compassionate world is possible. The question—“but can you/Practice lovingkindness?”—is almost rhetorical and geared at anyone reading these lines. The question is ultimately thrown into doubt by the poem’s close, where “You pop out of a hole, screaming. /Your tail shining on the splendid/Talus- and Dasani-bottle-strewn slopes.” The marmot reflects our own longing (and screaming) for kindness even as it reveals the dystopian, trash-filled world we continue to create.

“Friendship Banquet Bouquet (BFF FBB)” is a delight to read because it blends astonishing imagery, heart, and vulnerability to explore the nature of friendship. Images like “the freshwater jellies,” “deconstructed doll parts in the forest,” and “handful of chestnuts in my pocket” are at once strange, tender, and intimate— objects that make the speaker think of their friend. Each stanza and phrase becomes part of the bouquet, the collection of things that evokes the “you” addressed in the poem. And as readers, we can’t help feeling that some of this exuberance is directed toward us as well.

These poems carry the reader through a complex emotional landscape. They shimmer in their complexities and in the many ways they take on the horrors, joys, and wishes we hold for ourselves, each other, and our world.