Animal Purpose. Michelle Y. Burke

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      Animal Purpose

      The Hollis Summers Poetry Prize

      GENERAL EDITOR: DAVID SANDERS

      Named after the distinguished poet who taught for many years at Ohio University and made Athens, Ohio, the subject of many of his poems, this competition invites writers to submit unpublished collections of original poems. The competition is open to poets who have not published a book-length collection as well as to those who have.

      Full and updated information is available on the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize web page: ohioswallow.com/poetry_prize

      Meredith Carson, Infinite Morning

      Memye Curtis Tucker, The Watchers

      V. Penelope Pelizzon, Nostos

      Kwame Dawes, Midland

      Allison Eir Jenks, The Palace of Bones

      Robert B. Shaw, Solving for X

      Dan Lechay, The Quarry

      Joshua Mehigan, The Optimist

      Jennifer Rose, Hometown for an Hour

      Ann Hudson, The Armillary Sphere

      Roger Sedarat, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic

      Jason Gray, Photographing Eden

      Will Wells, Unsettled Accounts

      Stephen Kampa, Cracks in the Invisible

      Nick Norwood, Gravel and Hawk

      Charles Hood, South × South: Poems from Antarctica

      Alison Powell, On the Desire to Levitate

      Shane Seely, The Surface of the Lit World

      Michelle Y. Burke, Animal Purpose

      Animal Purpose

       Poems

       Michelle Y. Burke

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

      ATHENS

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      © 2016 by Michelle Y. Burke

      All rights reserved

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      Printed in the United States of America

      Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™

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       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Burke, Michelle Y.

      Title: Animal purpose : poems / Michelle Y. Burke.

      Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2016. | Series: The Hollis Summers Poetry Prize | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015045643| ISBN 9780821421987 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821445488 (pdf)

      Classification: LCC PS3602.U75527 A36 2016 | DDC 811/.6—dc23

      LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045643

      ISBN 9780821445488 (e-book)

       Acknowledgments

      Many thanks to the editors of the following publications, in which these poems, sometimes in different forms and with different titles, first appeared:

      American Literary Review: “Not by Extraordinary Means”

      Another Chicago Magazine: “Ghost Horse”

      The Boiler: “Upon Giving My Grandmother’s Chair to My Brother” and “Driving Alone”

      Georgetown Review: “Pacifisms”

      The Hopkins Review: Section 5 of “Homing”

      Lake Effect: “Flight Path,” “Nocturne,” and “Trick of the Light”

      The Laurel Review: “Home Economics” and “Sweet Girl”

      New Orleans Review: “Zalar’s Carousel Horses”

      The Offending Adam: “Narcissus”

      Parcel: “This Neighborhood”

      Poetry: “Diameter” and “Intensity as Violist”

      So to Speak: “On the Prospect of Heaven”

      Spoon River Poetry Review: “Farmer’s Daughter” and “Dear One”

      Storyscape: “Horses in Brooklyn”

      Waccamaw: “Wishing Stones”

      “Driving Alone” was reprinted in Best of the Net 2014 (Sundress Publications, 2015), “Market Day” was reprinted in Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2015), and “Dear One” was reprinted in Deep Waters (Outrider Press, 2012). “Nocturne” was reprinted in American Life in Poetry (2010).

      Many thanks to the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund, the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, the American Literary Review, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center for their generous support.

      I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all my teachers and friends who made this book better. Thanks to James Cummins, Danielle Cadena Deulen, John Drury, Kathy Fagan, Andrew Hudgins, and Lia Purpura, all of whom