Kara Dorris

When the Body is a Guardrail Kara Dorris

Set along lonely highways, the voices within When the Body is a Guardrail are restless and searching--these poems are seeking new ways of seeing, of being, of interpreting what it means to be human. Too often we treat life like a highway, like an 80s rock ballad, as both distance and a bridge, speeding towards some vast unknown, donning knee and shoulder pads, shin-guards and helmets, learning "to pull on flak jackets" and "to tread with stealth" that jewelry "jangles like an aftermath of traps." We want to be close, create intimacy without risk, but fail. And when we fail, we cannot forgive each other, or ourselves. The truth is, we drive into the morning light forgetting that experience will change us by the time we drive home through the evening sun. Each time we change, we become a new person, versions of ourselves that are never fully erased. When the Body is a Guardrail doesn't hide from disappointment or failure, that "soft-wet empty snow already understands." This collection begs us to pay attention: to the isolation of routine and small towns; to our allegiance to beginnings and endings but not to the journey itself; to the addict inside all of us. With eyes on the horizon, we are always looking for that bliss, that Eden, that perfection, and we are always failing. However, these poems are testaments to our resiliency, because despite all our flaws, we keep trying, we keep trucking along with windows rolled down and radios blaring.