The Lost Coyote

John P. Portelli's The Lost Coyote is a profound meditation on dislocation as a metaphysical state, an unflinching document of the human spirit's endurance amid catastrophic temporal and geographic rupture. This collection transcends mere memoir or political commentary, operating instead as a rigorous philosophical inquiry into the dialectic of belonging and exile, where the concept of "home" is eternally reduced to the "in-between".

Portelli employs a stark, almost cinematic lyricism to expose the scars of history, weaving personal memory—fragments of past loves, Mediterranean seascapes, and domestic moments —into the massive, impersonal horror of geopolitical violence. His poetry performs a constant deconstruction of time, where "yesteryear" and the present are fused by perpetual trauma. The clock face—a recurring visual and thematic motif —serves not as a measure of linear progress, but as a circular witness to a history that ceaselessly repeats its atrocities. The titular "lost coyote" is the ultimate symbol of the alienated subject: an existence "unnoticed", howling at a universe that remains taciturn. Love, when it appears, is framed by its own futility and transience, a brief "fictitious embrace" or a fragile desire caged by a world that demands a "perfect silence". This is a necessary, formidable work that establishes Portelli as a major voice charting the enduring sorrow and moral complexity of a globalized, yet fragmented, world.