Alphabet Year. Devon Miller-Duggan

These poems started with a bag of children's beach toys–primary-colored alphabet sand-molds–and a quiet afternoon. They ended up needing a spreadsheet to keep track of the first words. «Love» is the "L" word for all the disorderly abecedarians because it creates a thread with which to gather all the ribbons of art, religion, human cruelty, anger, and the infinite intrusions by the random that both buffer us from a frequently distressing world and buffet us with that same world's constant noise. Because the proper abecedarians have a more orderly arrangement with the universe simply by virtue of progressing through the alphabet the way it's supposed to line up, the "L" words shift and wiggle even as the poems fun-house-mirror each other. Ultimately, the poems reach for peace without demanding either understanding, or patience, deciding that it is not only necessary, but lovely to dance with the monsters underneath our beds.