Pariah

The fact that the author posed nude for this book cover should tell you about his commitment to its theme.

Poetry is meant to be provocative. Poetry is meant to be triggering. Poetry, like any art, should disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed.

In this collection, Sizemore refutes all notions of art being a safe space. He does not care if it is found problematic or triggering. He does not care if this work gets him put on blacklists and banished from the ivory tower.

This is the age of the cellphone. The age of the selfie. The age of reality TV presidents and fake news. Let your idols burn.


Sample poem:

What is known

The trees know nothing of gods,
the trees are the gods
exhaling life
they pleasure the sky
with effortless tongues.

The pigeons cooing in the loft
know nothing of martyrdom,
flight is a language
devoid of sacrifice,
the pigeons are the gods.

A grasshopper's mandibles work
without prayer's necessity,
worshiping the scent of green,
color their eyes never register,
the grasshopper is god.

The river is a vein without a heartbeat,
it knows nothing of birth or death,
it knows nothing but flow,
an absence of all senses lending itself to replenishment.
The river is god.

The sky knows nothing of stars,
nothing of clouds, birds or moon.
The sky knows nothing of rain,
of breath, of blue.

The Earth knows nothing of war,
nothing of geese forming their migrational V.
The Earth knows nothing of man
scribbling their worships onto cave walls.
Dirty fingerprints left on a bone.

The universe knows nothing of Earth,
nothing of Fibonacci,
nothing of the whale,
as a woman knows nothing of the life
she bleeds onto the bedsheet.