The Vault

Author: Andrés Cerpa 

Publisher: Alice James Books (2021)

The Vault is a quiet and vulnerable sequence of ethereal fragments, letters, and poems that trace a narrative of love and healing in the afterlife of a parental death. Seasons turn and a life is built despite the ruin. Each poem is a music box of prayer, of the decisions made and yet to be made.

"These are spare sequences, notational and nicked by grief, though they lash out in lyric unrest and sudden splendor. If I could lead you on a treasure hunt through The Vault, you'd find the porcelain shard, wolf skin, a set of calendar dates, the sound of silk and razor blades, and all the afters. There is something of an after feeling here, as though we were standing in the riled wake of catastrophe that lumbered past moments ago."

–Carolina Ebeid