Secret Histories

Poetry. SECRET HISTORIES control the intersection of hagiography, memoir and fiction. SECRET HISTORIES reject the dictatorship of reality, the death of the spirit where everyone says the opposite because they are right. SECRET HISTORIES channel alternate universes, alien abductions, societies where truth and reason no longer function. SECRET HISTORIES feature dread at the edge of the world where sea monsters and leviathan menace passing ships. SECRET HISTORIES, by Michael McInnis, is a journey from sea to sky, where you 'see the stars in each swell, as if land exists only at the pleasure of the ocean.' Mermaids walk amongst us, and fortune may allow us to trace their tattoos with our tongues. There are secret messages in storms and unquenchable thirsts, and a girl named Lucy, whose skin we can't stop thinking about. McInnis shows us 'how we dream up gods in our desert consciousness, ' knowing that all the while, the sharks feed below.--Heather Sullivan