The Body Wars: Poems

What would it take to be home in one’s body, to walk around the world as oneself, knowing the pain within and without us? Jan Beatty boldly answers that question by making a fire map of the body. These roiling poems smack into walls of meditation, only to slide down the smooth concrete into the flatline of joy. These are vital poems of dimension, of both psychic and literal travel, of the elasticity of truth and struggle, of the daily nature of desire that brings us to our knees—then shotguns us back to the heart’s center. The summer that I had nowhere to live:   the sky was yellow everywhere. The cars of other people had their own private shine.   I walked slowly. Several birds re-visited the backyards of strangers,   I was free singing the song of the last thing I didn’t say to you.