THE BONES WE LOSE

2024, The Fourth River Journal (Chatham University)

46 PAGEs | PAPERBACK

Silas Coburn has led dishonest and disgraceful life, and it has taken a toll on everyone he has come in contact with. In The Bones We Lose, part poetry and part story, a mythologized Pittsburgh is the setting for an ancient curse that follows the character principally known as The Note Broker. In this chapbook, building on poems that first appeared in The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, all attempts to build family, love, and legacy have gone awry, leaving people “honeycombed with regret.” In this world, “He knows how a collarbone can feel / like the slack of a noose waiting to snap.” Check out the latest work from Cameron Barnett, published by The Fourth River Journal, a publication of Chatham University’s MFA Program.