"An ambitious work, and a risky one, It’s Animal but Merciful finds common ground for a diverse group of poets in excellent craft and fearless voices...Read this book. Stick with it to the end. You will not be disappointed. You will be dazzled."- Emilia Fuentes Grant, The Pedestal Magazine
"It’s Animal but Merciful draws the reader into a page-turning set of accessible, provocative poems and short stories...International poets add a detectable international flavor to It’s Animal, which is also national in its American scope."- David St.-Lascaux, Interrupting Infinity
A collection of fearless poetry and prose from fifty-five writers across the United States, plus Botswana, the Philippines, Denmark, and Canada. This is world writing with a New York flair-no nonsense, no claptrap, ready to spit in your eye or call you lover in a cyberminute. There's brutality, glamour, danger, and glitz...but an unexpected tenderness too.
Contributors: Hala Alyan, Claus Ankersen, Daniel Aristi, Marcia Arrieta, Priscilla Atkins, Paco Brown, Gabriel Cabrera, Patrick Cahill, Billy Cancel, Lauren Marie Cappello, Peter Carlaftes, Jay Chollick, J. Crouse, Sabina Crowley, Marie Dominique E. Dela Paz, Rich Ferguson, Joan Gelfand, Flores, Christian Georgescu, Russ Green, Janet Hamill, Deborah Hauser, Karen Hildebrand, R. Nemo Hill, Aimee Herman, Vicki Iorio, Ted Jonathan, Kit Kennedy, a.m. kozak, Sarah-Jean Krahn, David Lawton, Richard Loranger, Christopher Luna, Catfish McDaris, Kate Marchetto, Kristen Orser, Daniel Scott Parker, Puma Perl, Dan Raphael, Francis Raven, Lynette Reini-Grandell, Karl Roulston, Cin Salach, skoo d foo da bom!, Mary McLaughlin Slechta, Jon Steinhagen, John Duncan Talbird, Charles F. Thielman, John J. Trause, Bruce Weber, Gina Williams, Theresa Williams, David Winter, Amy Wright, Tina Yang.
**Buy online, buy indie through IndieBound
JANET HAMILL
Wander.1
Because I cast myself off as a brave heart built of the straw of a sparrow’s nest. I cry all night when lilac bushes bend to the ground from rain. From snow. From habit. I cry in the absent arms that brought me. Warm from phosphorescent sky banks
Though nothing will ever close the distance. I still cry tied to the ribcage of the moon. Listening to the foghorns blowing over the seas of the moon. In rain. In snow. From habit I cry because a wanderer tries to break out of my skin
Every night. Its muscles heave and convulse. Its spine ripples its eyelids swell. Its oars dip. Its body rises and tries to separate with a boat no longer than a drugged horse. No wider than a channel of tranquilized blood
From mountain stillness. From sands restrained by carnivorous reeds from rain. From snow. From habit. I cry all night
DAVID WINTER
Parole
The Correctors have allowed you to try living in your name again.
Left hand in your mother’s, right hand in your woman’s,
you face glass, you face the man who has come home.
You tell me you learned home from that anti-place
where no drunk mother kicked you out, no father
mocked the accident of your making, where
concrete held you, softly, until anger fell from your body.
You tell me of returning to this world I shakily walk.
As you step from my family home into the open dark,
into our watched American town, I notice what has not changed:
your gait conveys a purpose, a place you mean to arrive,
a naked space, unwalled, unnamed, stripped of air,
not yet witness to the horror we call freedom, or its limits.
***
It’s Animal but Merciful great weather for MEDIA 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9857317-0-0 $15.00, 7.5" x 9.25" 162 pages
All our titles may be purchased via IndieBound, amazon, Barnes and Noble or order in person or online through your favorite bookstore. For international orders, all great weather for MEDIA books are easily ordered through any local online or bricks-and-mortar store.
Our books are also available through the wondrous Espresso Book Machine! “Prints a book faster than you can make a cup of coffee!”