Ashore sees mystery and spirituality in common nature, in the last of winter leaves and the green mountains that are covered by traffic. It sees violence, also, which everyone shares in a floating island of plastic or an albatross’ exploded stomach. In these poems, Nakashani is humble, responsible, and caring about the places she inhabits. Her poems ask us to care for what is small and specific in our own places, and they restore a kind of faith in these. To Nakashani, “it is enough, this tiny orbit, the spider’s quivering step.”

Emily K. Johnson is assistant professor in the Department of English (Technical Communication and Digital Humanities), graduate faculty in the Technical Communication MA program, and core faculty in the Texts and Technology program at the University of Central Florida. She is co-author of Playful Pedagogy in the Pandemic: Pivoting to Games-Based Learning (with Anastasia Salter, Routledge, 2022).

Anastasia Salter is professor of English and director of Graduate Programs and the PhD in Texts and Technology at the University of Central Florida. Salter is the author of numerous books including Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives (with Stuart Moulthrop, Amherst College Press, 2021), Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider (with Aaron Reed and John Murray, Bloomsbury, 2020), Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media (with Bridget Blodgett, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (University of Iowa Press, 2014).