Coriolis

The Coriolis effect—from which A. D. Lauren-Abunassar’s hyperkinetic debut collection borrows its title—describes a force that deflects a mass off course. This concept is at play both formally and psychically in Coriolis, recognized in Leila Chatti’s Foreword as “a book of wanting, of lack, absence, disintegration, opacity, and yearning. . . . ‘If only I could cut out the part of me shaped like wanting,’ writes Lauren-Abunassar. At times, the thing wanted for is love. Other times: family, certainty, belonging, home, safety, wellness, wholeness, or simply for a thing to be clean. Always, these poems reveal the shape of the want by illuminating its outline.” Perhaps the speaker of these poems wants most of all to be seen, despite...