Good Job, Lightning

"The work of Tony Brewer, while gentle and meditative, maintains a weight and impact that creeps up slowly. Humorous at times, without being silly. Serious, without losing its fun. A child discovering his mortality. A pistol at a poetry reading. The politics of shaving your balls. This is the world of Tony Brewer, and it might be your world too." - J.I.B., author of AMERICAN TELEVISION "Tony Brewer, an observer of the history of both art and war and a practitioner of ritual, constructs poems the same way others have constructed pyramids, tuned up trucks, or accessorized their human limbs. Here in Good Job, Lightning, he guides us through the psychodrama of parking lots and relationships, while steering us safely clear of bar fights, explosions, and the stomping feet of gods, and we will be better for it." -Jonathan S. Baker, author of Pressure, editor at Pure Sleeze Press, and host of Poetry Speaks: Poetry and Spoken Word Performances "The poems in Good Job, Lightning are understated ironic critiques of a surreal American landscape populated by a literalized back-alley arms dealer; giggling Dalai Lama acolytes; and an unhoused woman, who carries spare underwear in "a big bag full / of wrong chargers." Surreal vignettes alternate with tantalizing glimpses of personal experience: ghosting a wannabe Facebook friend; parking lot foreplay before shopping at Kroger; and the cathartic burial of a stolen pocketknife. Thus, the personal and the political are welded together throughout this collection-the undercurrent of memory being the lightning that does its good quicksilver job." -Hiromi Yoshida, author of Green Roses Bloom for Icarus