Poetry. LGBT Studies. An urban songline of New York. From the author of the memoir L is for Lion, comes a panegyric of the geology of Manhattan. These poems glitter. Manhattan schist is rendered as a template for the skyline and characters of New York. Grit and stardust collide in this debut collection of poetry and song. The book begins with the bright reflective quality of Mica and ends with the gentrified vision of the city where "New York is nine millions doors, and you have not one key." In between are stories of urban icons: iceman, fish peddler, heart butcher, meter maid, San Gennaro, the magic of grandmothers' hands, the vision of the oldest living tree in the city, immigrants who fell out windows and died in explosions, Italian phrases that link the essence of the sun to a rose to a heart, crushed tomatoes, sunsets, supermarkets, the glory of hot tar, the lessons of marines and lesbians. You will learn history and geology, Italian American heroes, and spiritual imperatives, through the syllables of this one poet's soul.

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is the author of L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY Press 2013), and SCHISTSONG (Bordighera Press 2013). She is also a songwriter and vocalist. Lanzillotto was born and raised in the Westchester Square neighborhood of the Bronx, and in Yonkers, New York, of Barese heritage. She received a B.A. with honors in medical anthropology from Brown University and an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poem Triple Bypass won the Italian American Writers Association Paolucci Award in Poetry, and was published in the 2002 anthology, The Milk of Almonds: Italian- American Women Writers on Food and Culture, edited by Edvige Giunta and Louise DeSalvo. Lanzillotto received fellowships and performance commissions from New York Foundation For The Arts, Dancing In The Streets, Dixon Place, Franklin Furnace, The Rockefeller Foundation. Lanzillotto teaches master classes in solo performance for the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and guest lectures in Theatre Outreach at Sarah Lawrence College.