I love how in Jesiolowski’s work the individual can also be the relational, can also be the environment. In this book, which folds into its loneliness and lyrical language affectingly candid statements of gender negotiation (“the stubborn, unwieldy boy inside of me”; “I don’t want a gender or work that can pass / as work”; “I’ve started the testosterone injections”), the phrase “I move into another body / that does not erase my own” might be about gender transition, but might equally be about the intimate exchange of sex. And yet the desire for blurred bodies extends outward into non-human entities: the receding fire here becomes the stars. In “The Distance,” “the sound of crescent grass sweeping past my body” is as intimate as not having left the house in eleven days. - S. Brook Corfman