“In Family of Many Enzos, Paige Lipari conjures a night kitchen that pulses with memory and fantastical incident. Volcanoes provide the heat, while “the red moon only comes out on the nights we stuff artichokes.” The cooking, too, is hardly homey: “enemies/ will be picking/ bones from their loaf,” and be sure to look for the “young American cousin in/ the sweet dumpling squash.” Smartly posed dilemmas of self-knowledge are entwined with strands of a generational saga, obliquely told yet vivid. Lipari pries at the connections that link all things sensual—food and pleasure (“Make me a feast out of the/ the brains you’ve lost in bed”)—to render felt intimacies, as well as the starkness of isolation: “Where are the candles kept?/ I am alone on this ceiling,/ and wasn’t even born timely to.” In Lipari’s night kitchen, the flame burns low but steady.” ~Albert Mobilio
