The Epistemological Question Mark
David Chorlton

A lion's tooth has appeared on his pillow
and Moctezuma will not sleep.
A woman carrying a basket of claws
goes weeping through Tenochtitlan
as cranes blacken the sky.
The lake is red and blistered
and a funnel of dust
rises from the succulent lands
where priests have gone to collect mushrooms
by a passing comet's light.
On one wet leaf, a tree frog bursts.

ISBN 1-59661-100-6
31 pages/$9
The poems in The Epistemological Question Mark create an elaborate interior landscape of the senses. This is a poetry of universal experiences and appeal, of the mind and the body transcending the ordinary with painterly eyes and a musical ear. Whether the subjects examined are exotic or everyday, there is nothing ordinary in the rendering. Chorlton is the rare, adept traveler; the perfect guide who not only sees but allows to see with him, the world with the epistemological question mark.
—Alan Catlin

With a seamless musicality between the personal and political, the lyrical and the engaged, reading this fine poet over many years has opened my own consciousness to the universal. Paraphrasing Chorlton, himself, his poems stimulate our collective imaginations, and all of our senses, to places not our own.
—Gayle Elen Harvey

Poet and visual artist David Chorlton was born in Austria in 1948 but grew up in the industrial north of England. In 1971, he gladly left Manchester to live in Vienna. In 1978, he moved to Phoenix. He often performs his poetry accompanied by his wife, the musician Roberta Chorlton. He has several poetry publications, including Outposts, from Taxus Press in England, and Waiting for the Quetzal, from March Street Press. The author painted the watercolor that appears on the cover of this book.