Poetry. Kel Munger ambushes the muse in a panoply of dramatic disguises--Cop, Coroner, Thief, Mermaid. She blasts gender and parades her protean poetics throughout history, the American work place, right into your local precinct. There is absolutely nothing fragile about these hard-hitting poems nor the peacekeeper's heart within--Maureen Seaton. The poems in THE FRAGILE PEACE YOU KEEP tell the most painful stories of life and death, but with a deep, reverberating humanity that brings them back to redemption: They crack jokes about your still-running watch / until the captain silences them with a scowl. / Later, they will all three awake in the night, / shaking, wondering why it was you this time, / wondering why they still breathe as they swing (10-79/ Notify Coroner). Neal Bowers writes, Balanced in our separate lives, we have in common a fragile peace we keep. Clearly, Kel Munger is a poet we need to hear.