Brandon Shimoda is a mystic poet. Hydra Medusa is an otherworldly book. By that I mean it is wholly of this world. The poems are small rituals that unmake and remake our world into something it actually resembles. This resemblance is not what you see; the feeling snakes into your entrails and refuses to leave. If you pick up one of his poems and turn it around in your hands, it will visit your dreams.