On the spectrum of possible deaths / Lucia Perillo.

The second slaughter -- Again, the body -- My father kept the tv on -- After the names are gone, the damage will remain -- To the field of scotch broom that will be buried by the new wing of the mall -- The caucus -- Domestic -- Skedans -- I could name some names -- Cold snap, November -- Auntie Roach -- Another treatise on beauty -- Bad French movie -- Proximity to meaningful spectacle -- Hokkaido -- At the hatchery -- Victor the shaman -- Wheel -- After reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead -- The black rider -- Pioneer -- Fireball -- To Carlos Castaneda -- 300D -- Photograph : the enemy -- Photograph : Grandfather, 1915 -- Gleaner at the equinox -- Lubricating the void -- Not housewives, not widows -- Freak-out -- Maypole -- Matins -- Black transit -- Heronry -- Les dauphins -- Rashomon -- Stargazer -- The unturning -- Wild Birds Unlimited -- Bats -- Autothalamium -- Red hat -- This red t-shirt -- The wolves of Illinois -- Pharaoh -- Samara.

""Perillo's poetic persona is funny, tough, bold, smart, and righteous. A spellbinding storyteller and a poet who makes the demands of the form seem as natural as a handshake, she pulls readers into the beat and whirl of her slyly devastating descriptions."-Booklist" Whoever told you poetry isn't for everyone hasn't read Lucia Perillo. She writes accessible, often funny poems that border on the profane."-Time Out New York. The poetry of Lucia Perillo is fierce, tragicomic, and contrarian, with subjects ranging from coyotes and Scotch broom to local elections and family history. Formally braided, Perillo gathers strands of the mythic and mundane, of media and daily life, as she faces the treachery of illness and draws readers into poems rich in image and story.When you spend many hours alone in a room you have more than the usual chances to disgust yourself- this is the problem of the body, not that it is mortal but that it is mortifying. When we were young they taught us do not touch it, but who can keep from touching it, from scratching off the juicy scab? Today I bit a thick hangnail and thought of Schneebaum, who walked four days into the jungle and stayed for the kindness of the tribe- who would have thought that cannibals would be so tender? Lucia Perillo's Inseminating the Elephant (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Bobbitt award from the Library of Congress. She lives in Seattle, Washington. "-- Provided by publisher.