Here is what Deshawn wrote about "If the Fragment is a Story":
"I fell in love with the tenderness of this poem. There is a gentleness to the narrative that carries me.
On a technical level, what brings me back to the piece is the intentionality of craft. The use of enjambment throughout so effectively evokes a duplicity of meaning from many of the lines that each read is an act of discovery in of itself. Take for instance the line, “and when I look for traces of him / elsewhere in her hope chest, he is nowhere” a break that allows the white space after ‘him’ to embody the nowhere that is yet to come, and it personifies the lack of as if it were both person, place, and idea.
And these meanings drip with a subtlety that permeates and mimics the language of the entire piece. Perhaps it is that subtlety that I appreciate, the ability to wrap me in softness despite the situation, embed me in a tenderness of the nostalgia while leading me to this end. Though it is unclear what transpired, it feels good to not be let in on the secret, to not know and surrender that desire to the mother and Arnold, to accept that there are “secrets we were never meant to know.” It takes skill to get readers to that point, for we are naturally curious creatures, arguably driven by that desire more than many (any?) others. Bravo!"
Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Heart Contracts (2016) and Accommodations (2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award.
