Theory of devolution : poems / David Groff

Theory of devolution -- Last moon -- Fall -- Proving ground -- A scene of the crime -- Gloria -- Laugh -- Picture of health -- Old pornography -- Adultery with Jesse Gerstein -- Swing -- The guy with the bathing suit around his neck -- Ron dies -- Leaving the farm -- No answers for French Fred -- Terror -- Trickster video -- Birthing -- Ron's been dead four years -- Memory -- Daisy Buchanan 1985 -- John beyond -- The crabmeat pickers -- Sympathy 1967 -- Near relations -- O brother -- Addison Groff chooses the mininstry -- Laundry -- Hospital garbage 1968 -- Life mask of Tom -- Your headache -- The watchdyke -- Naming constellations -- For catching hardshell crabs -- Facing east near Big Sur -- The sense of well being -- The Saddle River -- Personal land -- Magnitudes.

With blazing wit and a searing language, David Groff writes fiercely of erosion and endurance in this stunning debut collection. At turns fervent and elegiac, dishy and sly, these poems confront the effect of AIDS and HIV on a brotherhood that dealt firsthand with grief and loss and, later, the tenuous prospect of survival.

English