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at Ohio University and made Athens, Ohio, the subject of many of his poems, this competition invites writers to submit unpublished collections of original poems.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
© 2016 by Michelle Y. Burke
All rights reserved
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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