In The Pain Cycle, a torn ACL, surgery involving a cadaver specimen transplant, and the long aftermath of recovery become a taut locus of inquiry about identity, endurance, and transformation. "Sometimes you have to get a little dead inside," Wyckoff writes, in service of the way toward wholeness. These visceral poems reimagine woundedness and healing from eyes of an alien, Frankenstein's monster, and a time traveler, all while probing the difficult curriculum of pain, and how "new scars spark" revival.
-Laura Reece Hogan, author of Butterfly Nebula
Alexandria Wyckoff's The Pain Cycle charts the path from injury to recovery following a torn ACL. This path is not linear; instead, it circles and swerves, becomes otherworldly, as Wyckoff explores through the persona of an alien woven through the book. Wyckoff asks what it means to navigate an other body, one dependent on two new "metal limbs" that "click, click, click" as they carry her. While this collection will especially resonate with those who have experienced injury and its aftermath, Wyckoff's innovative use of form and her fresh descriptions-the injury "like a cello / string stretched / to its limits," or the way the "barren trees creak in the wind" as the speaker finally finds her footing-will speak to any reader.
-Laura Donnelly, author of Midwest Gothic
Alexandria Wyckoff's poems lead us from a gymnasium's shiny, waxed floor into the hands of a doctor injecting nerve blockers-from a high school girl's revealing Google search history into the cold shock of glacial runoff in a spruce-shaded valley. Better still, Wyckoff guides us from the claustrophobic desperation of the wounded into the laughter, spin and chase of a life on the mend, an alien becoming human again. A promising start from a writer to watch.
-Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, author of Salve
