Short, Fast & Deadly zine granted not one, but TWO reviews for Thomas Fucaloro’s fantastic new poetry collection It Starts from the Belly and Blooms as part of their latest Mash Up issue.

“So I took out my carving knife, and sliced into the belly. Surely the wound speaks just as surely as blood is a language that cradles the gut. How do you transform death into life? We peer, together, into the wound and find a miniature giraffe tangled in the intestines. I take it out and put it away in a closet, where it is both good company and a terrible haunting. When I venture into the closet we collide like children and glass doors. If you do not fear such moments of terrifying exuberance as these, then find them in Thomas Fucaloro’s It Starts from the Belly and Blooms.”—Joseph A. W. Quintela Short, Fast & Deadly (//italicized portions excerpted from It Starts from the Belly and Blooms)

“Thomas Fucaloro’s It Starts from the Belly and Blooms is a six-tier crystal chandelier fitted with wax crayons in 64 colors, ranging from “Love” to “Touching” to “Lizards and Video Cameras” and all dripping onto the expensive Oriental carpet in the room where you are reading this review. It is turning the expensive pattern on the rug into an encaustic masterpiece, a shiny, glutinous pop-expressionist rainbow that occasionally bites. Also contained in this book is an entire lunar cycle, complete with self-flagellating miniature giraffes riding on an endless ocean tide, pondering eternity. They want you to read this book and make them real, then forgive them.” —Katie Peyton Short, Fast & Deadly (//italicized portions excerpted from It Starts from the Belly and Blooms)

Congrats, Thomas!

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