book cover of The Bodies of Birds
 

The Bodies of Birds

(2019)
A collection of poems by

 
 
Resurrected and restored through the bodies of multitudes, a young woman who becomes an organ donor after a car accident radiates unmitigated love as she comes to know the recipients of her heart and kidneys - lungs, bowel, vertebrae, corneas . . . Twenty-seven years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, black storks glide over the Zone of Alienation. Apple trees bloom; lilacs flower - radioactive wolves thrive; bees make glowing honey . . . A prisoner in California, a man who killed a woman a hundred times, who stabbed face and throat, heart and belly, now washes another man in the shower, shaves his face, changes his diapers, protects and serves a murderer like himself, riddled by dementia . . .

Prayers, love songs, laments, confessions - these three provocative immersions through and beyond the body explore the revelatory expansiveness of consciousness and compassion; the persistence of love; the trauma of intimate violence and environmental devastation; unexpected grace; and the remarkable resilience of the marvelously diverse more-than-human world.


Genre: Literary Fiction

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