In the opening poem of Early Cuts, Lage writes, “I want sunlight to have the same posture it did in my youth.” For sunlight to have a posture, it must have a body; to have a body, the sun, like all of us, must then find itself in a continual state of healing. Even though the collection's sections suggest a linear path to recovery (“The Cut,” “The Infection,” The Healing,” and, eventually, “The Scar”), Lage resists the tempting belief that health is anything but transitory. She writes, “[The sun] recites a list of where all your scars came from. Donated from a patron who is the authors aunt. DS 6-2023.
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