Hound Triptych

"...Come carrion beetle,

funk-driven, burrowing through decay

toward sweeter stink. What could be said?

You survive a fall from heaven to sit at the root."

Hound Triptych, Dani Janae's debut collection of poetry, is a raw exploration of the intricacies of being an adoptee, the accompanying grief, and the destruction and rebuilding of the self through girlhood and into womanhood. The collection is a candid journey through the emotional landscape of abandonment and the human need for belonging; this is poetry that reaches into your chest and tells your heart, Listen. Feel. The poems mix gritty darkness with captivating imagery-the continuity of the ouroboros, cyclical and ruinous, the mouth devouring its own body; hair as a living entity, its knots growing into mammals that speak; a daughter's quiet, intrinsic love for her mother, "prized in the marrow, rich and pearlescent." Coupled with a wider scrutiny of the capitalization of adoption, Janae provides a perspective both personal and wide. Hound Triptych is an experience in the richness of the lyrical and an invitation to gaze into the unfettered chaos of the psyche and the heart and sit with them, unflinching.