Marco Poems is a chapbook with eight pieces by Daniel Muro LaMere. All of the poems are about the life of Marco, a terminal punker from up north in Minneapolis. Marco’s life is more or less a mess, but as the speaker says in the opening poem, “Our Marco is romantic all the same,” just as we all must be when drinking cheap beer and taking public transit. LaMere’s poetry illuminates the pains of aging in a lifestyle that, while exciting and high voltage at seventeen can sometimes leave a person lost and hurting in adulthood. And so our hero Marco gets around with ups and downs. On the up, “he left town with money that he’d earned / from sugar beets and paintings that he’d sold.” But even getting away can come with a cost, and the story made from these poems does a cool job of articulating these dangers. Marco “knows so many kids who have hopped trains / but some, it must be said, are missing limbs.” Marco Poems made me wonder what kind of world it would be if punks put out poetry books, like if there were a rule: you do an album, then you do a book. This collection definitely has an album feel to it—some drama, some choruses, and just the right balance of punch and electricity to keep me in until the end. –Jim Joyce (danielmurolamere.com, [email protected])