Army Cats

In the title poem of this latest from Kingsley Tufts Award winner Sleigh (Space Walk), readers experience "Cat invasion of the mind. Cat tribes/ running wild." These aren't cute kitties, though, but "great six-toed brutes" cavorting in the shadow of army tanks. Tanks, snipers, bombings, bloodshed, "mankilling time"—they all feature prominently in Part 1 of this collection, carefully detailed in blunt-spoken and sometimes even prosy fashion, with no lyric overload. It's as if Sleigh were acting as a reporter, describing violence in Iraq and Beirut and Cana, where Jesus once turned water to wine; one poem is even titled "Reporter." In Part 2, death gets broader and deeper—there it is, in a sweaty nightclub-like setting, "leaning over/ secretly spitting in everybody's drink"—and the writing gets more acrid, too. Part 3 ratchets up the energy, giving a feeling of life run riot, "our bodies/ longing to be held and fucked into oblivion." What better way to drown out our bitter end?