My Heart is a Rose Manhattan is a darkly humorous book about grief and
isolation. The poems are cutting yet tender; sorrowful yet filled with
righteous anger, absurdist at times but still recognizable, reassuring
us that "it's ok to grieve forever." There is death and loss,
architecture, alcohol, horse statues, and catalogues of life away from
the urban centres of Canada. This book wants to "subvert the literary
industrial complex," but also crash in like the Kool-Aid meme with
all-caps non sequiturs and "overdrawn affluenza." These poems are
addicted to social media and simultaneously well versed in feminist
theory. Some of the poems rail against the abuses of rape culture,
asking: What is excusable? Who is implicated? Who is believed?