Constellational, by Aidan Rogers

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. For Aidan Rogers, Poetry is a meditative conduit mirroring the concise and fragmented nature of memory. In his debut collection, Constellational, Rogers poses mindfulness as an antidote to the amnesia of an increasingly mechanized world, every piece a covert reminder of a lesson already learned. He writes, “I’m tired of conspiring to minimize life / Only for it to explode in our palms,” disarming a modern, collective fear of turning attention toward oneself. Mindful poetry isolates the present anxiety that defines our concepts of past and future. Informed by his experience as a community mental health counselor, Rogers examines that existential tension through a relational lens, whether it be to self, space, others, or objects. Stitching together past experience, fiction and personified emotion, Constellational produces reflective vignettes in which subject can be interpreted universally. “You” and “I” melt into one, fluidly joining