ENEMY LINES - John Martino

John Martino’s second collection, Enemy Lines, redraws the boundaries of modern poetry, ruthlessly weaponizing the medium to vandalize the cultural landscape, strip it for parts, and reassemble the fragments into a series of unapologetic poems that read like glitched transmissions from a rogue signal gone deliberately haywire. In an era of socio-political fracturing and retreat into extreme tribalism, this collection refuses to capitulate, declaring itself "a band / of one" that takes neither sides nor prisoners. For the reader who dares to cross it, Enemy Lines offers a divisive, irreverent, confrontational encounter, but one that ultimately yields "a premortem / afterbirth inbetween / delight."