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?
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