Description

"Into the deeper shoals of syntax strolls Philip Jenks, sans machete, instead with a watering can filled to the brim with acto-juice precisely calculated to make those nouns and verbs and articles shoot to record heights and tangles."--Kevin Killian

Philip Jenks's poems land like bolts of plasma: superheated, suppurated, the "inverted afterthought" of destiny that awaits the speaker of one poem, or absurdities that make a devastating sense, as when Jenks asks about "temperature of God" while invoking the fires of Auschwitz, or when he imagines meth-laced syringes puncturing a user's skin from the inside out. These poems draw blood.

FOX HOLE

--where the heart sits.
"Body song"
Of a prayer, you.
Ensemble
Ablated

They pulled the skin and fur clean off,
But the fox, panting, blinked with
What was left of eyes.

Peeled.
"Strung out"
Will I aid and abet
With inaction?
There is no difference
Between killing and allowing to die.

Philip Jenks lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he teaches English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His previous volumes are On the Cave You Live In (2002), My First Painting will be "The Accuser" (2005), and Disappearing Address (2010). He has toured and recorded with Neil Michael Hagerty as a member of The Howling Hex. His academic specializations are in gender studies, animal rights, and political philosophy. He likes good music and pinball.