Under This Combustible Sky

"Michael Carrino’s a poet who could only come from the East Coast; his work is dense with people and cities, factories and coffee shops. His tongue is thick with the cadence and grit of New York, both the city and the beat industrial zone of upstate. . . . these noir poems traffic in love lost, caresses remembered, desires fulfilled and troubling. They are humane, plain-spoken poems of not getting what you want, and of finding what’s enough." Mark Doty

"Michael Carrino’s Under This Combustible Sky is a richly peopled collection whose denizens are portrayed in a stark light like that of certain Hopper paintings, a light no less beautiful for its starkness and hard edges. Reading these poems, one realizes that in lives so full of defeat there are redemptions in solitude, and victories within the sacredness of the moment. The candid stares of these poems betray no expectations and no easy answers. Carrino’s accomplishment here is hard won and startling." Rustin Larson

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