Emotional Support Horse

Toutoungi's third collection is a tragi-comic journal of grief that, out of the chaos of bereavement, her failing eyesight and eco-stress, blends poems of startling wit and hard-won joy.

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Emotional Support Horse tracks the tragicomedy of grief, and out of low vision, bereavement and eco-stress blends poems of startling wit, verve and solace. A woman longs to transform into Nicola Walker in a cop car, or a Hungarian Vizsla, or just to find an equal footing with her doctor. Personal and planetary fractures blur in these vivid, dreamlike pages that will speak to anyone who has faced down confusion and rupture, when they strike. In part soulful, in part self-help, the poems veer between droll and despairing, their swings from high to low and back again reflecting a self adrift on a choppy sea. A self, however, not alone, but accompanied throughout by a host of other species. From earthworms to wolfhounds, flamingos to Konic ponies, the world of Emotional Support Horse flickers with light and life, charting sorrow's depths even as it stumbles upon joy.