What I like about Michael McNeilley's Situational Reality is the way the poems move from clear, direct narratives to a more mysterious, dream like surprise. Then, like the school psychologist, in the poem The school psychologist in late spring,"who drifts over the world below, watching things from a different, unique angle, seeing "kites soar up and back, dancing over the beach," the poems, like the kites, are pulled back to earth again. I like that mix of this world and something else, something mysterious, magical, weird. I admire the pared down, understated and strong feelings in poems like "swing low" where a man casually walks up in new hiking boots to a hill, drinks wine, listens to cassettes and throws them into the bushes before "finding nothing left undone/ having found nothing worth dying for," he swings out. Beautifully intense but never overstated;" true feeling in check. That same restrained emotion in a pared down style is in so many poems: in "Dinner," and another favorite poem "Carnate;" a poem that powerfully suggests an intense passage, never telling too much, letting the reader drift into the words and feelings all the more deeply.

The ambivalence of love and longing ("Cursive," is one of my favorites. the woman's handwriting triggering a daydream, a "pull of sun through autumn leaves" (so many dark poems always have sun and light in them) back to the handwriting in the end) is in many of the poems. McNeilley blends the dregs and joys of ordinary days, the most ordinary things: "catfood cans, a Jack LaLane program," with the mysteriousness of moments when "we move through the house, pull down the night/ together without touching." The beautiful love poem "for grace" where "light upon the water paints a line of green...I write this with my tongue upon your thigh," is another favorite. Small moments, intense and riveting. I like a lot of the car poems. Sometimes cars resemble relationships;" burning, melting and a lot of trouble. Sometimes the people in this collection hitch away or toward the speaker, leave "little whirling dust devils in the dry leaves by the side of the road in the silence where you stood." And in the strong poem, "Control" the car holds the speaker like his life

McNeilley's poems feel true. The ones where nothing works quite right, where "things kept breaking" as well as the ones that celebrate the moment. One of my favorites is "the material equivalent of tranquility" where the mix of light and darkness in many of the poems is in the images of "silver water..bright in deepened darkness." I like the humor in many poems. "How I got to sleep with the beautiful celebrity" moves nicely and amusingly from remembering a school kid writing to Nikita Kruschev about studying rocks to "another chance encounter but otherwise strangely similar I suppose in the mind of the famous actress for the once that counted..." His characters are always interesting: the art historian, longing for someone to "paint a line of pearls ..past the navel" or Billy "on the roof, throwing paper airplanes." A fascinating collection;" nothing sugar coated or phony. In another favorite poem, "Roll," the speaker, in a wheel chair, finds adults are suspicious, uncomfortable but "the kids are better...see in me a grownup who will meet their eyes." Even in the darker poems, there is a sense that "hope lies waiting" and "this is not so bad after all."

the cat won't eat,
turns her back on
white fish, sardines.
In human life she's
140 I think. In
six weeks she's
become wise to my
grabbing her for
insulin, fur pulled
into a clump. Other
Julys, my grand
mother watched
yellow roses in the
moon. We got her
worry beads. I wish
I'd found them.
Grey, the only light,
yellow birds I've
never seen before,
small loud suns.
Locust, willows,
arcantha. Then,
suddenly the cat who
turned her back on
everything, on
me is purring wildly,
wanting chicken,
dry food, my skin,
peaches, even beets.