Lunar Hilton Elegy

“The most surprising aspect of Lunar Hilton Elegy is that it isn’t so much an elegy to a lost world as a mesmeric topology of the world we presently inhabit—an eroded agriscape pitted with debt, where shelter is approximated by bombed-out, derealized Red Roof Inns and Airbnbs thick with half-mutant Pomeranians. Like a notebook disintegrating in a glyphosate rain, these poems are remarkable for their gentle unwirings and startling preservations, for the intimacies and recognitions Palacios’s speaker attends with his human, deweaponized eye.”—Joyelle McSweeney, author, Death Styles

“Gabriel Palacios lets his subconscious selves go out into the world and come back with evidence of life—'the lots of vacant boyhood,’ the ‘Hawaii of the next dog park,’ the plexus of almost-cells in the plastic palms in the peoples’ mall. Lunar Hilton Elegy sees what my tendency toward romanticism looks doggedly away from in Tucson, admonishes me with an incandescent specificity—with verve and love. Can I say that? After reading Lunar Hilton Elegy, I feel new and I feel newly loved, as if everything I thought tarnished in the Tucson city we share gingerly mocks my dismissal. As if everything I thought evil in this region (pockmarked with simulacrums constructed in praise of violence) would have me know, it’s all more nuanced than I could have imagined. With a gnarled syntax that shines more lucidly with each reread, Palacios delivers one stunning poem after another, and each will worm its way into your subconscious. In mine, forever lives a bleached caterpillar that I found in a parking lot I’ve never been to, where performativity might be properly mourned. This is one of the best collections of poetry I’ve read in the past decade. Put down the remote you’ve been using to try and steer that TVship, because the set has been languishing in the dump all this time. Tune into Palacios’s songs instead.”—Sara Sams, author, Atom City