Feral Ornamentals

In Feral Ornamentals, Charlie Green takes the particles and atoms that are our lives, reads them inside out and gives us beauty that says we are here and that every breath is art, whether we are grieving, loving, at war, or simply watching the snow fall and boiling eggs. "You can't live in the past, but still you can die there"-read this gift in the present so that we do not die in the past.

-Mukoma Wa Ngugi



Who knows what? What do they know? And do they know what they do not know? Charlie Green's Feral Ornamentals incites my epistemological curiosity. This new book offers dynamite lines, such as 'We had mixed feelings about discovering / new sins' and 'Regret the error, then forget it.' I love the company these poems keep: fragment, epigraph, epiphany.

-Jillian Weise