Sympathetic Beasts

By Lucas Jacob | Next Page Press

HACKSAW

The way he looked at you.

Said, what are you busy about, buzzing through these halls, causing no end of shaking along the walls?

Lucas Jacob Director of Writing, Communication and Media Literacy

Sympathetic Beasts tunes in to life, to its potential as well as its hazards and warnings, to physical and emotional perils often recognized only too late. At turns intimate, introspective and darkly humorous, these poems question everyday caution signs even as they lean into vulnerability, grappling with relationships, impermanence and the many ways the world can end. In this elastic collection, every danger is taken seriously, while no poem takes itself too seriously. There is a smile, or at least a knowing wink, for every foible of the all-too-human speakers in these quietly confident poems.

Said, here’s a heavy load— has to be halved somehow, some way, so how’s about it? His half here, hers there.

Said, shouldn’t shake just to see a man shoulder the shaggy burden he shares only with himself.

Said, there’s no thing standing so thick in this world these teeth can’t cut through it.