Poetry. California Interest. Music. Toy Fabels is Cass McCombs’ debut poetry collection. Reading Toy Fabels feels like traveling through McCombs’ singular itinerant experiences–high and low voices merge, as childhood and adulthood, the east and west coasts, paganism and religion, twist into each other. A central theme is memory, especially a sort of half-remembered, half-obscured–but never idealized–landscape of Northern California. This remembered landscape is always in flux, shaping McCombs’ poetic language. Within this unique place, Toy Fabels features a number of unnamed narrators–from delinquent graffiti artists telling absurdist tales, to Marquis de Sade’s shadow and echo, to a disembodied voice that provides the mythic grounding for the collection. Illustrated by McCombs, Toy Fabels’ brilliance lies in its embrace of the inexplicable and the ephemeral.