Within AshleyElizabeth Bests tightly woven collection when the world became a waiting room when medical sexism life in a disabled body family dynamics and genderbased violence made it easier to trust in your suffering Best shows us there is also joy new love pillow forts butterfliesBad Weather Mammalsis an evocative and emotionally open book that understands it is a privilege to have a story indeed it is also a privilege toreadthis story Best shows us the mould swelling the walls the comma of blood on the pillow the teeth marks on the cheese block and we are lucky for it Conyer Clayton author ofBut the sun and the ships and the fish and the waves

In the unflinching rebellious candor that isBad Weather MammalsAshleyElizabeth Best confronts and exposes the perplexing medicalindustrial complex that promises life in this diagnosis Then they leave you like thisand into the interior of human nature we go even in the earliest deposits of river veins within our nature are traces of animal nostalgia Best asks the hardest of questions in this love letter of a collection to the chronically ill to those grappling with contemporary life To live is to bear it I pluck a leaf from the maple tree out back a thousand hands clapping into the chorus of the wind Experimenting with form structure and the body itself as no longer the limit Best threads together intense family dynamics taking us from the tornado spiral cowlick her nails bedded into the flesh of my knee right into the gut of its wanderings swells with arteries of fish Dont look away Dont come for easy answers Take your time withBad Weather Mammalsand listen especially carefully when Best asks Where does the story pick up where do my poles strengthen Rosebud BenOni winner of the Alice James Award forIf This Is the Age We End Discovery

The poems in and acrossBad Weather Mammalsrepresent an unfolding an unfurling of reclaimed and repurposed self despite and through whatever else had been has come and still is rob mclennans blog

As I readBad Weather Mammalsamidst headlines that report increased legislative scrutiny on the rights of queer and disabled individuals I am amazed by the pertinence of Bests writing Each poem illustrates how the intersection of various identities femininity disability trauma in ones life leaves an invisible stamp that defines how they are treated politically and interpersonally Contemporary Verse 2