Research Catalog

Title

The dead eat everything : poems / by Michael Mlekoday.

Author

Mlekoday, Michael, 1985-

Publication

• Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, [2014]
• ©2014

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 64 pages; 22 cm.

Summary

"This book is a document of a particular world, real, wrenched from the poet's life, as if written with a gun to his head or a spike through his heart. Reading it is like opening a damp newspaper wrapped around a big fish just caught, fins glistening, scales shining, one rhymed eye open and looking right at you, daring you to eat the whole thing." Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men"The Dead Eat Everything, Michael Mlekoday's furious first collection, is a cypher of old-school curses, elegy, and wordplay that snaps like gunplay. The book begins with a self-portrait when 'summer was one wet weapon after another' and doesn't stop. Not for a power outage, Catholic mass, or sewer steam. Not for a 'four-finger ring that says DOPE.' Not for the city that repeats itself like breakbeats in the head. The poems in this book are as relentless as a Minneapolis winter. And when the speaker says, 'Scientists have proven that the mouth is the last part of the body to die,' we understand that the mouth hangs on just to speak poems like these." Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke "It's easy to forget because of the brute beauty of the language; because of lines like 'I have made gods / of my skinned hands'; because of the whiplash brilliance roped through these poems that deeply, ultimately, this is a book of ourning, of sorrow, of loss: for a dad, a Baba, a city, a home. But, to boot, Michael Mlekoday's The Dead Eat Everything is a book of magic: watch sorrows be converted to music. And music, don't forget, makes you dance. Makes you move. Moves you." Ross Gay, author of Bringing the Shovel Down"The Dead Eat Everything is a haunting an unsharpened visitation of memories. Each poem unfolds itself as if we are just now remembering stories told to us long ago, simultaneously new and exciting while comforting in their familiarity. Mlekoday's debut collection glows. Let it. Let it light the way home." Sierra DeMulder, author of New Shoes on a Dead Horse.

Series Statement

Wick Poetry first book series

Uniform Title

• Poems. Selections
• Project Muse UPCC books
• Wick poetry first book series ; 18.

Alternative Title

Poems.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 63-64).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

I. -- Self-Portrait with Gunshot Vernacular 3 -- Dictator, by Which I Mean the Mother Brandishing a Pistol with a Piñata over Her Head 4 -- In Minneapolis, My Father 5 -- Self-Portrait, Wearing Bear Skull as Mask 7 -- First Plague 8 -- Self-Portrait, July 10 -- The Novelty Doorbell Turns Prehistoric 11 -- Forage 12 -- Home Remedies 14 -- Self-Portrait, Downtown 15 -- Baba Sits You on the Kitchen Table and Teaches You All the Old-School Curses 16 -- Self-Portrait with Pollination 18 -- Going North 19 -- Genealogy 20 -- Self-Portrait, Fat Tuesday 22 -- Departure, the Path Back Puddled Over and Darkened 23 -- Don't Ask Why I Stopped Believing in Magic 24 -- II. -- Self-Portrait with Blight 29 -- III. -- Playing Dead Means Different Things to Different People 39 -- Self-Portrait from the Other Side 40 -- Flood 41 -- Self-Portrait with Power Outage 42 -- Self-Portrait with Big City Religion 43 -- To Vanish, Cover Your Eyes and Count 44 -- The Motherland 46 -- Self-Portrait Wherein Everything Whirrs with the Spirit 49 -- Self-Portrait, after Drive-By 50 -- Bobby Hasn't Eaten in Three Days 51 -- Cartilage, Cartilage 52 -- Elegy on Old-School Drum Machine 53 -- Thaumaturgy 54 -- Drop 55 -- Maker 56 -- Self-Portrait, Kneeling 58.

ISBN

• 9781606351895 (paperback)
• 1606351893 (paperback)

LCCN

^^2013030410

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library