MY SISTER'S FATHER is an American Gothic. In a world of plenty and waste, these poems go behind the closed doors of an affluent, suburban household to expose its foundation in unspeakable violence. MY SISTER'S FATHER tries to find a language to capture the crisis as it breaks and the walls come closing in.
"These nearly weaponized poems manifest what it’ s like to be caught in a trap where family, money, and world have turned against each other, and no one, not even the reader, can touch a single object “ without touching the consequence.” These are poems of singular shipwreck in the wake of a collective crisis that pulls every piece of personal debris into its maelstrom. How do we grieve the gap between the true and the false signatories? Gardiner shows, bravely, deeply, that poetry is how we, is what survives." — Eleni Sikelianos