Reasons to Leave the Slaughter by Ben Clark
Reasons to Leave the Slaughter by Ben Clark
Clark's collection tells of the balance between our desperate human need to own a place and call it home, and nature's constant battling back with infestations, tornados, an animal's unforeseen death.
Reasons to Leave the Slaughter will lure you in with stories that call for imaginative romps through the pastures, down to the pond, or up the perfect climbing tree. It is a place of broken limbs, jealousies flaring up between brothers, unwieldy advice handed down from a father, poverty, and love found then lost again.
Told through numerous voices, young and old, male and female, human or animal, these poems give enough space and time to allow the fantastic to take up equal residence alongside reality.
This book revels in youthful discovery, in the hopes and despairs of those growing old without seeming purpose, in the ever-present balance between beauty and brutality.