Wal-Mart Orchid

trying to find their way by knife-glint

through our cities, to create a tribe

and language out of gunshot and graffiti. 

—Marjorie Saiser, author of Beside You at the Stoplight (Little Bluestem Award) and Rooms

Sornberger writes with grace and tenderness of the many things that divide us, such as class, gender, and education, and the small things that bring us together. . . of the empathy that is possible in the fragile moments when our lives intersect, even against the depersonalizing backdrop of commercial monoliths like Wal-Mart. —Louise A. Blum, author of Amnesty and You're Not From Around Here, Are You?  

In beautifully lyrical language, infused with clarity and insight, Sornberger takes us inside this most American phenomenon, reminding us that we are all connected, perhaps most deeply when we imagine ourselves apart. These are poems the world needs.  —Alison Townsend, author of Persephone in America

The speaker patrols a daily life of frustration, conflict, casual hostilities and ever-mounting culpability, but she refuses despair. . . and continue(s) her necessary mission: “to keep seeing what cannot be / and spreading its gospel.”—Gaylord Brewer author of The Martini Diet and Give Over, Graymalkin.