POP rummages through the stale Cheetos after the love poem: what remains? What never existed to begin with? The book invites the reader to journey both forward and backward in time, to retrace steps, solve word searches, hold pages to the light. POP delineates the intensities of a volatile relationship through a variety of lenses. As the speaker tries to anchor her experience, she is met with a clamour of perspectives: it is ajunk food fight of poetic styles, each line fried and seasoned using recipes passed down for generations; it is a sad clown's skincare routine; it is a singalong, a cartoonish cacophony of pots and puns. The speaker shakes the love poem for all it's worth, leaving behind a trail of lint, wrappers, fibs, and soap foam, but opening up enough space to move in herself. | Pop by Simina Banu, Paperback | Indigo Chapters