The Rooms We Make Our Own

Mirosevich's four-part collection of poetry and short prose pieces evokes the ghosts of Gandhi, Betty Crocker, Hamlet's sad Ophelia, and Virginia Woolf, all joining the contemporary workforce approaching the second millenium. Madonna, not yet a ghost, is there, too--a small woman who drives a 35-foot trailer truck and is "scrutinized" by "trucker paparazzi" with "their mouths so open birds could build" in them. Other characters include Russian emigres who, no longer afraid, no longer whisper; a traveler to Arizona encoutnering a waitress-seer; and a woman who lost her Britanny spaniel to her ex-lover, whom she can forgive for cruelty, bad judgment, and ignorance but not for giving the dog away.

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