Safe Houses I Have Known

A father revealed as a spy, a child unmoored from normalcy—in Safe Houses I Have Known, poems ripple with the secrets that we keep from ourselves and each other.

As a child during the height of the Cold War, Steve Healey learns that his father is a spy for the CIA. Beneath the banality of everyday life—the suburbs of Washington, DC; school and play; his parents’ deteriorating marriage—assumed names, parallel lives, and myriad Cold War menaces linger. Drawing from CIA training manuals and pop...