The Body Is No Machine

by Perrine, Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9781930974692
• ISBN10: 1930974698
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-02-15
• Publisher: New Issues Poetry & Prose

Summary

Poetry. "Jennifer Perrine is a poet of formal agility and surprise, with a command of language that ranges from the spare to the luxuriously rampant, from the scientific to the ecstatic. THE BODY IS NO MACHINE--indeed! Here we see the sensual body in all its chameleon shades of gender and passion. These poems are exact, intelligent, vivid, thrilling--a first book to admire, and a poet to watch"--Betsy Sholl.

Table of Contents

How Clay Becomes Flesh
My Mother Learns the Language of Pregnancy	p. 9
Pica	p. 11
In Honor of Your Birthday, I've Been Mauled By a Dog	p. 13
Mother as Rope	p. 14
Ex Ovo Omnia	p. 15
To My Cannibalized Twin	p. 16
Couvade Aubade	p. 17
The Night in Her Mouth
Coveting, with Pronunciation Guide	p. 21
I'm in Love with a Tooth Grinder	p. 22
To My Love: Before Surgery: Asleep in Bed	p. 23
To My Love: After Surgery: Asleep in Public	p. 24
Because You Have No Sense of Smell	p. 25
Tullio's Adam	p. 26
My First Stripper	p. 27
In Response to Your Attempts at Seduction	p. 29
Time and Song Enough
Brood X	p. 35
For D., After Three Months on Testosterone	p. 36
Portrait of D., After the First Operation	p. 37
Menage a Trois with Two Women and an Imaginary Man	p. 38
Gender Question #2: Butch, Femme, Androgynous, or All Over the Map?	p. 39
Buzz	p. 41
Out on My Birthday, October 8, 1998	p. 43
When the Palm Reader Sees That You Have Two Life Lines, He Says You Must Choose One	p. 45
Coda, Codex, Codon	p. 46
Fiancee of Death
Because You're No Magician	p. 51
Love Song with Corset	p. 52
Elegy for the Night We Met	p. 53
Ballad for My Sweetheart the Drunk	p. 54
Epithalamium with Peeping Tom	p. 55
Mission Hill Lament	p. 56
Broken Sonnet	p. 57
Elegy for Mrs. Donnell	p. 58
The Second Song of Miriam	p. 59
Clicks and Whirrs
Esprit d'Escalier	p. 63
Upon Learning that Sony Was Granted a Patent for Beaming Sensory Information Directly into the Brain	p. 64
To Mirah: In Utero: On Being Named	p. 65
Dysmorphia	p. 66
The Amputation of My Brother's Finger	p. 67
For My Brother, Who Cannot Cry	p. 68
The Weight	p. 69
The Body Is No Machine	p. 70
Shift of Dirt
Genesis: On the Seventh Day	p. 75
When You Ask Whether I Ever Played with Dolls	p. 76
Ballad for a Goth Chick	p. 78
Photograph of My Grandparents on the Farm, August 1945	p. 80
To the Ghost in My Front Yard	p. 82
The Resurrectionist's Wife	p. 83
Still Life	p. 84
Sadie Imagines God	p. 85
In Praise of the Myoclonic Jerk	p. 86
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