Once you enter The Vanity House, there is no escape, only further falling down the rabbit hole. The vanity house, eclipsed by towering trees, takes root in the deepest corners of the subconscious. Rub your eyes, pinch yourself, but you won’t wake from its haunting. Filled with ghosts of dead relatives and distorted reflections, the home hums a Siren song the strongest soul could not ignore. In The Vanity House, Alexander York leads us through a forest of fever dreams, but how will we know when we’ve awoken? Spring 2014.

Praise for The Vanity House

The Vanity House is a container of beautiful darkness and of every-dimensional environment. Tight, terse, unforgiving phrasings…The lines in this chapbook have a thick atmospheric tonal quality that reminds me of Yusef Komunyakaa’s most memorable lines; they carry a thick, molasses-sweet tone that matches the book’s focus.
—CJ Opperthauser, Threadcount Magazine

This trilogy of ghosts claims, "No one will remember / their names," but that is a lie. We will remember. We will always remember. We will know their names, even in the blood-light, even in the trees. We will wait and we will hold these names in The Vanity House & "everyone will clap." At the end of it, York’s couplets have unlocked the ghost-poem, spilling us forward into the ether.
—Joshua Young, author of THE HOLY GHOST PEOPLE

The Vanity House is a vision you have abruptly and can’t shake, one where your family is dead and you plant them to grow food, one where screaming infants are abandoned in a basement wearing masks with your face on them. But maybe, somewhere in these weird halls there is hope, looking for you.
—Sara June Woods, author of WOLF DOCTORS