"Boney-Fingered Reach for God is a remarkable debut, a testament to Mark Brown's striking imagination, energetic vocabulary, and devotion to intense love relationships. This three-part work is fueled as well by the poet's appreciation for the bizarre in historical situations, culminating in poems that literally radiate around the life of Marie Curie. Brown's vulnerable investigations of love and his wacky narratives are made all the more vibrant by the poet's metaphorical skill. It is bittersweet that the gracefully sequenced Boney-Fingered Reach for God is also Mark Brown's posthumous signature, the life of a poet cut short." -Molly Peacock, author of A Friend Sails in on a Poem