bury it
wesleyan poetry
ALSO BY SAM SAX
book
Madness
chapbooks
StraightAll the RageSad Boy/DetectiveA Guide to Undressing Your Monsters
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
© 2018 Sam Sax
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed and typeset in Calluna by Eric M. Brooks
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
NAMES: Sax, Sam, author.
TITLE: Bury it / Sam Sax.
DESCRIPTION: Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2018. Series: Wesleyan poetry
IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2018008568 (print) | LCCN 2018012530 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577320 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577313 (pbk.)
CLASSIFICATION: LCC PS3569.A896 (ebook) | LCC PS3569.A896 B87 2018 (print)
DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008568
5 4 3 2 1
This project is supported in part by an award from the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Front cover illustration: Art by Carolin Wanitzek, Die Traditionelle Tote Tiere Tombola
for my family
blood & otherwise
The term “epitaph” itself means
“something to be spoken at a burial or
engraved upon a tomb.” When an epitaph
is a poem … and appears in a book, we
are aware that we are not reading it in its
proper form: we are reading a reproduction.
The original of the epitaph is the tomb
itself, with its words cut into the stone.
I am eager to burn….
contents
33 I Want So Desperately to Be Finished with Desire