God Had a Body (WEB PDF) von Jennie Malboeuf

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.

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

<GRAY>phylum<GRAY>::class::order::family::<GRAY>genus<GRAY>

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

The mind and the body. The heavens and earth. God and animal. The speaker inGod 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 futurefrom 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.

Born and raised in Kentucky, Jennie Malboeuf received a BA at Centre College and an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her poems have appeared in theGettysburg Review,VQR, theSouthern Review,Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina with her husband, David, and dog, Mavis. She teaches writing at Guilford College.