13th Balloon

"Mark Bibbins takes a leap back in time to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the heart of the AIDS epidemic that took the life of the poet’s first serious partner. Bibbins is guided by memory and longing and the true wish to have back some of what’s gone. This speaker, who is as vulnerable as language allows, knows these poems have arrived too late: “I have only language for you now/ a language/ that morphs like a virus/ to elude to survive to connect,” Alas, Bibbins seems to have anticipated this year’s seasons of grief, and he is kind company."