doomful

Concrete, pavement, "(tarmac, blacktop, lonesome)," "the neon of a floozy motel," and the "post-industrial particulate" of "the spiky city" come to feel every bit as natural--that is, as necessary--as the floral species of those southwestern biomes that ground these poems: greasewood, cranesbill, "Doomful orange garden!" Palms appear in the book's final, fragile oasis: "(I almost forgot to tell you) III lived II in a desert / where palms are signposts of water, not the want of it." In counterpoint to the book's primary story of violence and survival, threads the motif of California's tenuous resilience.

"Doomful donkey" - Political commentator Quentin Letts's description of Sir Vince Cable.