
"Rose Quartz," by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe. (Milkweed Editions, 136 pages, $16.)
A thread in Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe's adeptly woven debut is the story of Little Red, a runaway, journeying through the punk scene. The wolf is a blond rapist, but there is no huntsman. "I pull myself out through its matted fur and take one full breath."
Spells turn "words into power," which is also an apt description of LaPointe's poetry. A miscarriage is alchemized into: "I gave birth / to a fist / full of petals." In these lovingly forged poems, she tracks a solitary healing journey: "my breath my only company."
In describing a concert where "people tumbled their limbs like lovers against me" or listening to tapes of her grandmother's voice, LaPointe conveys with dazzling intensity that while our healing is in our own hands, we need not be alone.

"If I Could Give You a Line," by Carrie Oeding. (The University of Akron Press, 61 pages, $16.95.)
In her second collection, Carrie Oeding, who grew up on a farm outside of Luverne, Minn., unspools long poetic meditations by considering a single word. "Line" is a poetic unit, an aspect of art, a signifier for waiting, or "a telephone cord to stories and signatures." "This line is not a path," Oeding prepares readers for her conceptual meandering.
"People are really dumb about babies," she quips, her deadpan style punctuated with dazzling similes: "I have as many feelings as an umbrella that can't be opened."
Many poems narrate looking at art, including the boredom, distracting thoughts, and an overheard scoff at her baby stroller. These rangy poems ask: Once you accept you are having a transcendent art experience, what else becomes available?