Micro-review: The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost On Her Way to the Execution by Karyna McGlynn

Aza Pace

Karyna McGlynn’s new poetry collection The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost On Her Way to the Execution offers a visceral, seductive exploration of language and sound. McGlynn’s narrator is eerie but compelling as she slips a hand “under the black lace of language & nude-like stuff underneath.” We follow this narrator down strangely lit hallways to become immersed in the repulsive beauty of ornate chandeliers and eavesdrop on several women as they ponder power and sexuality. Throughout the collection, McGlynn’s poems sustain an air of cinematic suspense, as if the reader is either in pursuit of or being pursued by some “lost” queen. These poems revel deliciously in the “nightmares which follow us a little behind and to the left.” Expertly crafted and engrossing, McGlynn’s new collectionis haunting enough to be read by flashlight in the dead of night, and boldly lyrical enough to be shouted out loud for the salt taste of her words.  

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