Anthony McCann seeks out the elusive Other with all the raucous
self-loathing of a mad saint. Eroticized, debunked, adored and
despised, the sayer of these incantations ventures, with appropriate
fearfulness, into the known, buoyed only by the persistence of the body
in its current manifestation. His penetrating, pervasive doubt lends a
perverse clarity to the journey, and lends shape to the spirit world.
“I approach the house in tiger pants/ thinking of surrender and of
holding on.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FROM THE BOOK Skywalker Ranch
I was struggling to embrace the new technology
when quite on accident I drained the harbor, dredged
the locks,
and devastated the local economy now finding myself
still trying to yoke this motor, runaway outboard
in a burrowing fury.
O my heart, manic mudskipper, surging in mud.
Writing these lines I am overcome with fatigue and
despair as if
the temperature had risen suddenly and I,
inner pioneer and amateur pharmacologist, were
sweating
true bricks!
I give up, get off my knees, take off my lifejacket.
Because no one lives here anymore, except security
and the gardeners. I am the world's last actor,
I have to inspect the "winery." Add some more dust
to the bottles, peel more paint from the barn,
or perhaps a stick of commemorative gum? I need to
pretend
that I am under attack from the air.
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Anthony McCann was born and raised in the Upper Hudson
Valley region of New York state. He holds degrees from
the University of New Hampshire and the University of
Iowa. His poems have appeared in various magazines as
well as in a chapbook, IN PRAISE OF REASON, published
by Pine Press of Vilnius, Lithuania in 2001. Currently
he teaches English as a Second Language in Brooklyn,
NY, where he lives with his wife, cartoonist and
fellow ESL teacher, Ellen Sharp.
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