Love poems, lust poems, being-at-loose-end poems, scintillant-banter-with-wine-and-a-friend poems, done up with the rollercoastering sensibility that gypsy queen, high-IQ-and-octane, brazen-21st-century-chick Michele Battiste brings to the page, the smarts and tenderness lurking under a verbal surface that pops with a scavenging packrat's hoard of sine curves, tarantellas, pad thai, medical marijuana, Cassiopeia, makki with wasabi, petit mal seizures, Toasted Almond lipstick, doumbek rhythms, tchotchke merchandise, daikon root and cardamom and a Pepper Grove pinot noir, not to mention Ovid's Book X...odd (and lively) cartography indeed.  (Plus, my name is on the acknowledgments page: how cool is THAT!)

-- ALBERT GOLDBARTH

These poems are driven by some super high-octane duende. They spin and spill all over the place with a controlled recklessness and a sustained energy. She's ready to take flight at the smallest provocation, wings oiled up, in tune with the mad universe.

-- JIM DANIELS

Ink for an Odd Cartography

by Michele Battiste