Over the course of fourteen pages, Gabriel Hart details his escape from the toxicity of Los Angeles into the surrounding desert. His post-flight shift to poetry conveys airiness, a sense of space stiflingly absent in the city. With that said, the author’s lack of prose control throughout weakens the impact of what might otherwise be a powerful transition. Despite Cinema of Life’s brevity, this one is hard to read. Witness this sample sentence: “I moved away from the city that I once solemnly swore I would die with, decisively breaking the chain of warped solidarity that would have otherwise confined me to its random Russian Roulette legacy of cyclical obsolescence, where an artist’s sharp but brief peaks of success and support tend to eventually get blown into the wind from the very revolving door of its fickle migrants, who aren’t exactly sure what they want from the city after they realize the L.A. they were looking for may no longer exist.” I understand the argument for form following function, but to warrant further consideration, this over-modified rambling needs editing. –Michael T. Fournier (Space Cowboy Books, spacecowboybooks.com)