The Refrigerator Memory

Happiness
You are my little wolf, my naked man
in the morning. You find my sad ankles
like spurs that jingle jangle jingle.
You are my tuxedo, my rose.

The Refrigerator Memory is an exuberant, strangely funny celebration of sadness.

With fable-like miniature stories and short lyric poems, Shannon Bramer creates a world littered with stolen pears and prosthetic arms and inhabited by Kindness scientists and hot-air-balloon operators. The poems invoke a world of childhood delights and demons in the context of grown-up fears and appetites: heartbreak, loss, jealousy and old-fashioned sibling rivalry. You’ll find the hopelessly misunderstood Love the Clown (never goes out without his red wig) and Noni, a forlorn young man who can’t stop crying.

But while sadness plays a starring role, the true hero of the collection is the imagination; its transformative powers warm widows and drunken gods and designated mourners.

You won’t forget The Refrigerator Memory: the icebox cometh to warm your heart.

‘Bramer’s “Our Prosthesis” … [is] wonderfully succinct, while still managing to convey entire lives floating beneath its surface.’ – Lee Gowan

‘[Bramer writes] poems with resonant grief, fragile glass and desperate love, carved carefully and spare out of cold, dark objects, achieving small, remarkable poems.’ – Rob Mclennan