The Apple House

Aiden Brown illuminates a fraught, grief-steeped life in The Apple House which navigates the boundaries and limitations of girlhood and the hauntings one experiences whilst being disturbingly alive. Raw, and feeling as if you are walking on glass and rose petals simultaneously, these tender poems interrogate, scream, and erupt from their shadows like a prayer. Brown’s poems inhabit a landscape of desire and vulnerability, interspersed with artwork that graphically transcends language into the borders of love, heartbreak and sexual trauma. Reminiscent of the gothic, and an amalgamation of poets like Dickinson with modern artists like Ethel Cain, this book excavates ghosts—coalescing to become a flame that is as harrowingly beautiful as a wildfire.

-Lux Alexander