“The magisterially motley lyric we of Adam Vines and Allen Jih returns, kink for another day in no less tight, kinetic lines that twist—or waltz, in intricate triple-time—from an Aztec solar myth made new (‘When Shrinking Begat the Sun’) to desolate ‘Nights in Lascaux,’ encircling, meanwhile (‘in dusk’s perpetua’), a ‘Tourists Miscellany’ of wryly chosen, resonant ‘remainders’— Jelkova trees, Himalayan salt, the ‘Slip ‘N Slide defunct‘—memorials to those beloved suburban other-worlds (‘satin skies and frozen ground’) a trope beyond the one that we would know.” —DANIEL GROVES, author of The Lost Boys

“Strap up your combat boots, lace up your girdle, and take ten diaphragmatic breaths before you draw back the tent-flap of this freaky burlesque show. To be kinky during the day is to be—in the healthy, Victorian sense of the word—queer. And these poems are nothing if not queer. Mosey slowly through Day Kink, three steps at a time. Savor, line by line, its lasciviousness. Maybe you’ll come out of it without any trauma or slime. Or maybe, like me, you won’t.” —HASTINGS HENSEL, slouched-over drunk at the old grouper bar

“Day Kink, Allen Jih and Adam Vines’ latest collaboration, honors the contortions of modern life—not the unending slog of ‘clocks and coffee / and lunches’ but those brief, high-def moments that punctuate the null: a couple ‘smashing glass / against the winding loops / of culverts’; a suitcase dumped into a river; a mother impersonating Gene Simmons. Each poem invents its own logic, filled with sensory and linguistic twists, but together they sketch an almost-familiar world where loneliness and desire are inextricable. This is a poignant book—and a charming one too.” —CAKI WILKINSON, author of The Wynona Stone Poems

TRISTAN ALLEN JIH is an aerialist based in Las Vegas where he performs in Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love Show. He was also a straps aerialist in two performances of Cirque Du Soleil’s annual event, One Night for One Drop (2014, 2015). Previously he has served as captain of the variety troupe called the Quiddlers. He made his performance debut on America’s Got Talent in 2013. He also writes poetry.

ADAM VINES is an assistant professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is editor of Birmingham Poetry Review. He is the author of Out of Speech (LSU Press, 2018) and The Coal Life (University of Arkansas Press, 2012) and coauthor with Tristan Allen Jih of According to Discretion (Unicorn Press, 2015). He is on the judging panel for The Poets Prize and has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Rivendell Writers Colony, and The Alabama State Council on the Arts.