The author grew up in Westbury, a working-class town on Long Island, where many of these ruminations hitchhike back to. He has been a pastor at First Congregational United Church of Christ in DeKalb, Illinois.

The corner of Memory and Desire. That’s where the prose poems of Joe Gastiger take us. They’re inhabited by a diverse cast: Aunt Joan, Commander Cody, Snow White on a can of tomato paste, Kurt Vonnegut, Magdalene mermaids, fathers more comfortable with tools than words, and leggy Mary Shulski. They all find a home here, along with the “wheatback penny on a plate beneath the geranium”.

Loose Talk is a warehouse of theremins and fluoroscopes, a library of radio dials and mystery underwear, a lost litany for the unforgiven, a libretto (in a dead language) that reminds us “the destroyer of worlds and Our Lady of Fatima soul kiss at the mall.