David Daniel explores a city-entire lives-swept clean off the map in this haunting debut

As breezes lap the shallow-tugged tide flow
And swallows twitter and skirt the dusk,
We lie within the wreckage of the stars-
The moon spill, our planets' pull-this sad machine.
--from "Seven-Star Bird"

You will not find Friendship, Texas; it now lies at the bottom of a lake of floodwater, forgotten. In Seven-Star Bird, David Daniel rescues the town's-and the poet's own family's-stories and memories, from an immigrant past and from the clutches of devastation. In a weaving of elliptical and elaborate voices, lyrics, and narratives, Daniel's debut collection-guided by Heraclitus-discovers an ethical, religious, and aesthetic antidote to the disasters of loss and disappointment, why the gods call down their inexplicable punishment, why we can never step into the same river twice.