Odes to Anger

by Jason Yurcic

Poetry is everywhere
In the truck on my way to work
It lies on the dust-ridden dashboard
It’s even in the bathroom with me
when I sit to take a shit

It’s in the air
On my tongue
In the gutter
In the dirt
Under rocks
In a sickly tree
Far weaker than the rest
On the soot-stained palm of a man
asking for change…

— “Walking Into My Mind”

These poems by Jason Yurcic reveal the heart of a survivor.

In the title section, the poet, caught in “the unspoken language of pain,” escapes his beginnings only to find that the culture of violence has followed him.

In the second section, “Meditations on Breath,” he charts his journey to survival.

In the last section, “Walking into My Mind,” he contrasts the backbreaking manual labor of his day job with his real work, “to write/Love/Hold my children while rocking them to sleep/Children of the flesh/Children of the word.”

6 x 9 inches • 64 pages • ISBN 978-0-9816693-2-8 • $11.95