Naming the Mannequins is an ecstatic journey through the seamy underbelly of a fading, unnamed town populated with seemingly hollow, anonymous souls. Taking place over the span of one night, this series of linked poems gives us glimpses into the lives of unlikely urban saints on their individual quests for personal humanity and spiritual redemption.
Marred by loneliness, violence and desire, Labriola's world, at once lyrical and cinematic, occupies that irresistibly dark place in our cultural consciousness somewhere between film noir, crusade story and the songs of Tom Waits.
Praise for Nic Labriola's Naming the Mannequins
"The story of one terrible night that is every night in the forgotten guts of the city, Nic Labriola's Naming the Mannequins moves with a powerful beat, jagged yet steady and remorseless. It's a condensed novel in verse, a gallery of strange and disastrously linked characters, their failed yearning tattooed in fire on the darkness."
— A.F. Moritz, author of Night Street Repairs and The Sentinel
