Fandango by Walter Ruhlmann, Urtica With a foreword by Steve Klepetar "Love is illusion, and even lust is stripped of its romantic, erotic charm. Inside, hidden from the lover, lives the wolf, an embodiment of appetite, as dangerous as it is energetic and wild. These poems lay themselves bare, rejecting the false comforts of easy and joyous connection. In one of my favorite among these, "Congratulate," the animal is a cat who hunts to feed her kittens: "She brings them back dead animals,/lovely huntress - she should be called Diane..." Like the goddess she is lovely and deadly, proud of the fleshy prizes she brings, left there "on the carpet for us all to consider,/her treasure, her trophy, a feather in her cap,/an awesome gift for the month-old furry balls." Maternal instinct intertwines with violence, pride, and death, capped off by the adorable image of the almost newborn kittens. The emotions here come off as complex, ironic, informed by cynicism and humor as well as by horror." Steve F. Steve Klepetar