I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girlis film noir set in verse, each poem a miniature crime scene with its own set of clues--frosted eye-shadow, a pistol under a horse's eye, dripping window units, an aneurysm opening its lethal trap. In otherworldly vignettes,1994 pairs the unreliable narration ofJacob's Ladder (with its questions of identity and shifting realities) with the microscopic compulsiveness ofEinstein's Dreams. The book's sense of hypnotic premeditation bringsDonnie Darko to mind as well, as poem after poem scatters the breadcrumbs of a murder mystery leading us further away from the present self and deeper into the past.I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl isan astounding debut collection that will crawl under your skin and stay there. "I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl is a remarkable book. It is innovative, original, unprecedented, and, at the same time, its originality and innovation are predicated on a passionate, even obsessive relationship with the past."--Lynn Emanuel