Host

In raw, lyrical poems, Host explores parasitic relationshipsbetween men and women, sons and mothers, and humans and the Earthand considers their consequences. Throughout this collection, flukes abound, both chance occurrences and flatworms changing their hosts behavior. How much control do we have over our lives? To what extent are we being controlled? And how much does it matter in the end? Revealing the unvarnished pain of mistreatmentwhether inflicted maliciously or accidentallyLisa Fay Coutley examines legacies of abuse in poems that explore how trauma parasitizes bodies, infecting the text, repeating in language and image the injuries the body has been subjected to. How can people heal from intergenerational traumaand how can humans mend themselves when they live on a planet they abuse daily? Ask me why light can pour warm through a cold bay window while water under sun is dark as a closed door. A mans hand erases a girls thigh. The trees start starving themselves into everyones favorite color. Her darkest room digs itself below her throne. The body knows no wrong move. The more love, the more. Excerpt from Oubliette