Lara Coley delivers her debut poetry collection with a hunger that gnaws at the line between lust and love. It’s sexy, honest, and does not shy away from what makes us a yearning to love and be loved. Using a dichotomy of imagery in which sharp meets soft, or sweet is replaced with salt, ex traction explores how we sometimes mistake a red flag for a target, and run like hell at the man that’s ready with a saber to put into our back. How, sometimes, we make ourselves into red flags and wave until we become flames that burn down everything we wanted. Coley looks at loss and lust and how desperately we want to sculpt both of those into love, and how the less we get, the more we want, need, and demand. ex traction is an empowering, emotional, evocative read that you can’t miss.