not human enough for the census

"In Erik Fuhrer's not human enough for the census, there are creatures of dark habits, organ breathers, tree butchers, and 1 in 100 scientists agree the state of god is liquid. In these poems, aftermath requires a new language. Dust and ash compound with mother and father, mud compounds with blossom. These spare lyrics contain numerous transformations, and "just because the body is gone/does not mean the absence of body is gone." Absences loom everywhere--the mouth, the breath, the treacherous god in the tempest."

-Traci Brimhall

"In Erik Fuhrer's Not Human Enough for the Census, toxins inhabit the living like ghosts moving through generations, as silent and unseen as they are deadly; there's "oil in blood, breastmilk, saliva" and bodies with coal for eyes.... That is, the fluidity of his verse blurs the boundaries between bodies and their environment; it exposes hurricanes as climate ignorance, and shows how, here in the age of the Anthropocene, poetry can evoke a sense of the anti-nature we're ushering into being."

-Steve Tomasula