A WORKING GIRL CAN'T WIN and Other Poems

This first poetry collection doesn't quite live up to the narrative arc suggested by its witty table of contents. No matter, though, for Garrison's contemporary Holly Golighty, the young career woman of the title (who ""craves good jewelry""), is smart and sassy enough to sustain this always transparent volume, with its tales of thwarted sexual sophistication (""I'm never going to sleep/with Martin Amis/or anyone famous.""), its ""vulgar"" lusts (for sweaty firemen), and its naughty subversions of the bosses and co-workers who haunt her days. A self-described ""hot little bundle, flush with/cliches,"" Garrison's self-effacing poet admits her own marriage lacks romance, but it makes up for it with yuppie bliss: an image of her lawyer husband playing golf. Garrison's short lines, with their sly rhymes and perky rhythms, jangle like bracelets, even as they risk girlishness (in phrase such as ""an Executive Thingy""). A debut of great promise.