You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room. Phone's for you, Jeff says. Hey! It's Uncle Jeff, who isn't really your uncle, but you can't talk right now, one of the Jeffs has put his tongue in your mouth. Please let it be the right one." How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for. This last panel from "You Are Jeff" concluded one of the best poems from this book. If you are a GR friend of mine, I have probably already sent you a poem (or 2, or 3) from this book as I've taken my time to read through it. You can’t get out of this one, Henry, you can’t get it out of me, and with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me like the bullet was already there, like it’s been waiting inside me the whole time. Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.

A powerful collection of poems . . . at once confessional, gay, savage, and charged with a violent eroticism.- Forecast Still, some of the images he constructed were pretty clever, and they make good use of language in expressing perceived queer inadequacy. I just wish these were more frequent!! You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr­ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for. Siken is beyond talented with words, that much is clear, this entire collection is a work of pure art, something you rarely find these days. Every line is powerful, it's got secrets. Every poem has meaning, and soul and something deeply terrifying about it.

I think that's the most beautiful piece of poetry I've ever read. I won't convince you. Here's my fav poem. I'll never stop reading this book, and that's the great thing with poetry, analyzing, understanding and interpreting and simply feeling it, is a never-ending process. I carry his words with me everywhere, both in the shape of his actual book, but also in who I am. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for."

Ugh why does everyone love this book? Siken, the winner of the 2004 Yale Series, is clearly a capable poet, and there were a few moments in this collection that were beautiful and lucid. Otherwise, though, the poems are so overblown (too many words going in too many directions) and drowning in imagery of bodies, knives, and death. Oh, and SO much cheesy, disembodied dialogue. I can’t NOT give Siken some credit, as this book was published in 2005 and I’m convinced it must have had some sort of impact or influence on the contemporary poets I regularly enjoy reading (Crispin Best, Sam Riviere and even Richard Scott kept coming to mind, for instance). And then, I don’t like treating contemporary poems as tiny puzzles asking to be made sense of. In fact, I normally avoid trying to grasp the meaning behind every single line – “a good poem understands itself”, as Emily Berry put it in an interview for Chicago Review of Books. Besides, with contemporary poetry, I’m trying my best to enjoy the ride and genuinely have a good time. how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another appleBullets, movie-like violence, car rides, stitches and gritty motel rooms form recurring themes in this bundle. The world sketched is grimy and bleak, with occasional flashes of beauty and tenderness, despite violence I am in love with it. That's the easiest way to put it. My copy is worn out from being opened, read in, then thrown onto the table or put carelessly down as I try to gather myself up from my messy emotional pile on the floor and try to deal with, well... myself.

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again."

It changed me, and I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. I read it (or devoured it might be more accurate) and suddenly found a side of myself put into words. Words I was never able to find myself, but needed more deeply than I'd realised. The collection of poems contemplate infatuation, intimacy, loss, and grief. It is said that Siken's main inspiration was the death of his boyfriend in the early 1990s. [2]