I’d almost forgotten – well, not really, I just have little time – to mention the anthology Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take up the Knife, which came out in October, on almost the same day as UNBURIAL.  The anthology is edited by Betsy Mars, and is a collection of original poems inspired by an offhand line of mine, “Knives cut both bread and throats.” Betsy and I were chatting about social media, its virtues and its drawbacks, and I fired off a line she liked.  We exchanged poems beginning with the line, and Betsy liked the idea of an anthology so much she even started her own publishing imprint, Kingly Street Press, to make it happen.

Here is my contribution to the anthology:

Duality

Knives cut both bread and throats
tongues and fruit, a length of rope
to fashion both knot and noose.
A blade can scissor hope,
whittle back bone, crack
skull, scrape out the pulp
from teeth then sign its name
in flesh soft as an apricot.
It is a weapon, and is not.

(There are twenty-three other poems in the book!)