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A review by zarvindale
Tilt Me and I Bend: Poems by Ned Parfan
5.0
Desire is adjacent to danger in the second poetry collection of Ned Parfan. Compared to his debut, the grip in language here is much tighter, and there’s skillful demonstration of transmogrifying the simplest sentence structures into slithering sensuality. In the Murmur Asylum, the persona attaches trauma to sex. Here, the persona acknowledges that thrill is prerequisite for pleasure; without thrill, the act, such as sex, won’t be as sweet as imagined.
Go beyond reading the book’s title and listen to it: it’s a command. An imperative. So follow. Obey. Parfan urges you to think of what you covet the most as the thing that glints at night as you look past the window of a bus you’re in. The thing will willingly tilt and bend if you tell it so with your stare. The moment it does, bloom, like the flowers on the book’s yellow cover.
Go beyond reading the book’s title and listen to it: it’s a command. An imperative. So follow. Obey. Parfan urges you to think of what you covet the most as the thing that glints at night as you look past the window of a bus you’re in. The thing will willingly tilt and bend if you tell it so with your stare. The moment it does, bloom, like the flowers on the book’s yellow cover.