Utility Location, by Susan Rukeyser

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Utility Location is a multimedia micro memoir, pairing tiny prose-poems with the author’s cell phone snapshots of unrelated street markings. It is a book about being jumbled, out of place, in search of signs. It is about the pull toward darkness and also light, and the many people we become, across a lifetime.

Susan was struck by the spray-painted utility location markings that appeared throughout her Southern, suburban subdivision around the time of the 2016 election, a time of upheaval in her personal life, too. She went on to take pictures of other messages, on other streets, unconcerned with their meanings. The pictures offered abstract inspiration, a way into her own story.

The result is a tough, shorthand, diaristic, imprecise, and contemplative review of a life so far. It is feminist, of course. It gets a little political.

Susan Rukeyser now writes and reads in Joshua Tree, California. She wrote the novel Not On Fire, Only Dying (Twisted Road Publications), and the flash fiction collections Swap/Meet (Space Cowboy Books) and Whatever Feels Like Home (above/ground press). Her short fiction and creative nonfiction appear in many wonderful places, online and in print. Susan published 35 contributors in Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology and hosts the Desert Split Open Mic, Joshua Tree’s feminist, queer, and otherwise radical spoken word open mic. www.susanrukeyser.com