Speak

"I don't know what it is I'm supposed to do. I don't know what the tools are. I don't have the manual." Toward the end of a difficult battle with cancer, Jay Rossier, author of Living with Chickens, compiled this collection of poems. These poems wrestle with the gristle of life, from a child hesitant to pick up a kitten, "its loose bag of skin, the bones / and organs sliding around under your fingers," to frustrations with illness, "Living to me now / means keeping to myself." Each one looks life in the eye unafraid to lose the staring contest, but determined to speak.