The Sound a Car Door Makes is an irascible joy ride through late capitalist fallout. In finely tuned prose poems one part whimsy, one part angst, on part rock and roll, Natalie Tomlin negotiates the culpability of our boundless mobility with speed, grace and an engine's low growl. Never do we forget we're traveling through the dark at unsafe speeds. Strapped in with toddlers and absentee fathers, Mr. Iacocca and Joan of Arc, we hurl "past twenty-four-hour diners hanging on like dried-out barnacles," serenaded by Led Zeppelin and smooth jazz, our ears ringing with car door slams, Collision Center surveys and the squawk of bodies scooting across vinyl in an endless bounty of seemingly "improvised song."

• Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, author of A Wake with Nine Shades and Her Read, A Graphic Poem