Always Danger offers a lyrical and highly imaginative exploration into the hazards that surround peoples liveswhether its violence, war, mental illness, car accidents, or the fury of Mother Nature. In his second collection of poems, David Hernandez embraces the element of surprise: a soldier takes refuge inside a hollowed-out horse, a man bullies a mountain, and a giant pink donut sponsors age-old questions about beliefs. Hernandez typically eschews the politics that often surround the inner circle of contemporary literature, but in this volume he quietly sings a few bars with a political tone: one poem shadows the conflict in Iraq, another reflects our own nations economic and cultural divide. Always Danger parallels Hernandezs joy of writing: unmapped, spontaneous, and imbued with nuanced revelation.

“Fierce and swift and crisp, David Hernandezs poems drill their way into the real and always find something alive and surprising there. Theres plenty of cleverness here, but what is special about these poems is an unusual quality of determination. Hernandezs imagination goes at the world in attack-modenot to show off, but to discover its human depths.”Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me: Poems

“These poemsas urgent, fragile, wily as they arego beyond the merely personal into the great world. Hernandezs patient, generous eye is on family and stranger, the wounded and the lost, the rich life of the city, its parking lots and freeways, sad yards and heavy metal. Finally, a poet who is not the center of his universe! And its never simple, the dark joy that comes of such fierce attention.”Marianne Boruch, author of five collections of poetry, including Poems: New and Selected and two books of essays on poetry, most recently, In the Blue Pharmacy

David Hernandez published his first collection of poems, A House Waiting for Music, in 2003. His poems have appeared in FIELD, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly. His drawings have appeared in Other Voices, Gargoyle, and Indiana Review. Hernandez lives in Long Beach, California, with his wife, writer Lisa Glatt.