Pig: Poems

While the subject of Sax’s third full-length collection (after bury it) is succinctly encapsulated in its title, the poems within expand their reach across a limitless range of human thought, history, endeavor, and identity, all filtered through an explicitly queer, Jewish sensibility. From “portrait of a drag queen with a pig nose” (who embodies “the perfected form of all our darkest literatures smiling”) through “xenotransplantation” (“my friend’s a vegan with a pig heart/ thumping club music”), Sax finds a shared porcine presence, whether it emerges in a virus (“n1 h1”) or in popular culture, as captured in a 1950s Life magazine photo (“james dean with pig”). Sax’s most incisive lines spring from disarming vulnerability (“for so long i would not touch myself/ for fear of finding a body”) and resistance against irresponsibly wielded power (“a corporation is a synonym for an individual who dreams in rare earth metals”).