Shorts: Poems and Short Stories is an inviting and heartfelt collection that captures the beauty, humor, complexity, and contradictions of everyday American life. Charles Lopez Bruns writes with the eye of an observer, the voice of a neighbor, and the soul of someone who has lived fully in multiple worlds—urban and coastal, youthful and seasoned, personal and universal.
The poems are rich with place and memory: New York streets alive with music, beaches carrying the weight of longing, neighborhoods changing with time, and family moments imbued with tenderness or bittersweet nostalgia. Bruns excels at transforming small, seemingly ordinary details—the leaf stuck in a car grill, a lost wedding ring, commuters half-asleep on a train—into reflections on identity, love, aging, and community. His tone ranges from playful (“LeBron James, pollo grande”) to poetic meditation (“Love the Sea, See the Love”) to social commentary (“Status” and “America”), demonstrating impressive range.
The short stories anchor the collection with narrative depth. “More Than Street Wise,” written in 1978, stands out as a visceral portrait of youth, fear, loyalty, and the hidden dangers of growing up in the city. Its rawness contrasts effectively with the lyrical calm of many poems, showcasing Bruns’ versatility.
Across the collection, Bruns writes with sincerity and accessibility, inviting readers into moments that are vivid, relatable, and often quietly profound. Shorts is a celebration of lived experience—one that moves gracefully from memory to observation, from humor to heartbreak—and leaves the reader feeling they’ve been guided by a thoughtful and generous storyteller.
The above book review was generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
–December 7, 2025
Charles Lopez Bruns 