Reasons to Leave the Slaughter by Ben Clark

Ben Clark’s Reasons to Leave the Slaughter is a wild, tender journey through the places we call home and the inevitable forces of nature.

These poems wander through childhood memories, family struggles, loss, love, and the difficulty of growing up. With voices that shift between human and animal, young and old, Clark creates a world where the fantastical and the familiar exist side by side. It is a place of broken limbs, jealousies flaring up between brothers, unwieldy paternal advice, abject poverty, and love found then lost again. 

For those who have always wondered who would win: nature or nurture.

With time though, all boys stop
believing. A week before you found them
dead you left them waiting
for you, counting the days,
the lifetimes until you returned.

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Ben Clark grew up in Nebraska and now lives in Minneapolis, where he works as an editor for Muzzle Magazine and Thoughtcrime Press. He has two collections of poetry: if you turn around I will turn around (2015) and Reasons to Leave the Slaughter (2011).