Chronic Death
A poem-styled response to Joyelle McSweeney's "Death Styles"
Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney, Nightboat Books, 2024
Loved this book. Feeling somewhat inadequate at the moment (sickness, vacation) to style this a review, so a few lines penned in aftermath instead:
untitled (chronic death) The poem gnarls startles my wife fingerbrushing the ink-black hallway this gentle, quiet poem curled into our daughter’s bed, growling —fierce, submissive Cerberus! with your sweet mane of snakes devour the living who lapse the dark betweens the theaters of passage down the hall I am sunk in hum window unit blasting fullbore away with the day’s hellheat let me boil in disaster’s dream-damp the icky clamp of Kansasland's steam laundry In the morning we laugh eye the poem with suspicion its black body languid on white linoleum eyeing flies as they utilize its snout for a launch pad while I fix lunches and slice my finger on the dull knife cutting carrots, unbidden savagery the pain of it propulsively runny my hand spilling I can’t find napkin or paper towel in this unfamiliar kitchen the poem perks up rises to whiff the splattered red on the floor Buy Death Styles from Nightboat