“Darling girl, when all else fails…join the circus.”–unknown “(kerplnk): a verse novel of development, is love Ondaatje style, …exquisitely crafted.” –Alison Walker In this brilliant and powerful collection, images of the circus are central. One of the first lines reads: “funambulism. barefoot—no leather soled slippers. her big and second toe cut deep in between by braided tight wire. no props–just freehand.” The definition of funambulism is “tight rope walking.” The theme of these poems are balance: both literal, with ten antique carnival prose poems becoming the spine of the collection, as well as symbolic, with prose poems about women’s stories/voices—balancing their growing/shrinking bodies and their ordinary/extraordinary lives. This book is about the distorted expectations of domesticity and of the female heart.