Collected Body

Valzhyna Mort is a dynamic Belarusian poet, and Collected Body is her first collection composed in English. Whether writing about sex, relatives, violence, or fish markets as opera, Mort insists on vibrant, dark truths. "Death hands you every new day like a golden coin," she writes, then warns that as the bribe grows "it gets harder to turn down."Preface" on a bare tree--a red beast, so still, it has become the tree. Now it's the tree that prowls over the beast, a cautious beast itself. A stone thrown at its breast is so fast--the stone has become the beast. Now it's the beast that throws itself like a stone, blood like a dog-rose tree on a windy day, and the moon is trying on your face for the annual masquerade of the dead. Death decides to wait to hear more.so death mews: first--your story, then--me.