Full Description
The mind and the body. The heavens and earth. God and animal. The speaker in God had a body considers how the image of a higher power is presented to her, beginning with a Catholic upbringing in Kentucky. Speckled with stars and peopled with creatures, these poems employ a trinity of sequences that address a present, past, and possible future—from a troubled reckoning with belief to loss and promise still ahead.
In this debut collection from Jennie Malboeuf, we observe undercurrents of violence and power, the dynamics of memory, gender, marriage, and miscarriage. At times, God is brutal. At times, delicate. Through true stories of animal savagery, God had a body unravels human behavior and undoes the opaque and cryptic mysteries of faith.
Contents
Acknowledgments
The Godhead
Part I
First Death Ever Filmed
Christ is a Great Blue Heron
The Cow's Eye
Animals in the Bible
Frog Gig, 1983
Some Things Have Been Heard Enough
Grackles
Wilding
Ruth
Sacred Heart
Animals
The Meaning of God
A Figure for the Holy Ghost
Part II
The Country
Orrery
The Leonids
Early Signs of the Apocalypse
Zoonosis
Song of the Cock
Men in My Bed as Dead Animal in Dog Mouth
al Meal
Landscape Where I Forget My Father
Blindfold
Animals in Captivity
The Nightjar
phylum::class::order::family::genus
The Giving Away
Repletion
Snakehandling
Fear
What the Eclipse Does to Animals
The Miracle of the Pigs
Landscape Where I Miss My Mother
Phobia, 1985
lullaby
Grandmothers
The Men
In the Myths
Kingdom
Hubris
The Women
First Mirror
The Screwworm
Mnemonics
Ode to the Cannibal
Man, Beast, Lion, Bird
God-man
Inscape
Thought Inventory with Rorschach and Caesura
Letting Go
Topography of a Bird
Part III
Newfound Star System
Double Star—
Orbs
The Godwit
To Begin With
Heavy Animals, or Frustrated Attempts to See God
Immolation
The Hydra
Eschatology
The Gospels
The Lesser Water Boatman
Orgasm as Lapwing
Erection
Valentine
The Quickening
Wedding Night
Elfland
Nesting
flying change
Strawberry Moon
Honest Signals
Reasons We Should Be Together
The Night We Decided Was a Day
