This Is Not a Skyscraper examines New York City through a surrealist lens. Like the title of Magritte's painting, "This is not a pipe," these poems question perceptions of the metropolis. While NYC entices talents that swarm its stages, museums, runways, and readings, throngs of outsiders live on the city's margins, silenced. Among the grotesqueries of corruption, an African immigrant is killed by police in a case of mistaken identity. His disembodied voice introduces the book. Many of these poems attempt to speak for the "others" existing on the peripheral, whose perspectives have been abandoned.
Reviews

Most of his poems are also lyrical, with striking imagery. Here is a poignant description of a Coney Island sideshow performer in the beginning lines of "Scorpion Cowboy," from This is Not a Skyscraper.

How does he tend to the body's needs? Clunk! His pincers thud like sand-filled shoes. Making his mother's body bleed

when he was a boy, he swore he'd mask his thalidomide shame like a bruise.

-Sharon Olinka

Book Information
ISBN 9781597094160
Author Dean Kostos
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint Red Hen Press
Publisher Red Hen Press
Weight(grams) 181g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 8mm