Threat Come Close: Stahlecker Selections

In his debut collection, Aaron Coleman writes an American anthem for the 21st century, a full-throated lyric composed of pain, faith, lust and vulnerability. Coleman’s poems comment on and interrogate the meaning of home and identity for a black man in America, past and present. Guided by a belief system comprising an eclectic array of invented saints—Trigger, Seduction, Doubt and Who—Coleman’s quest finds answers in the natural world where “[t]he trees teach me how to break and keep on living.”