Using fact and folklore, James Laughlin Award-winning poems plumb the marvelous and weird to understand childbirth, parenthood, death, and—of course—joy.

The Symbolical Head as When Was the Last Time?...7More Experiments with the Mysterious Property of Animal Magnetism (1769) .... 9Zoontological Sublime ... 12About Derrida, If You're into That .... 16Bat Boy Washed Up on Shore .... 19Benjamin Harding to Prospective Investors on the Refining Effects of Static Electricity and Volcanic Action in the Ultimate Production of Both Atomic (or Molecular) and FREE Pure Metallic Gold (1838) ... 21 Testimonial (1888).... 23P. T. Barnum's Figi Mermaid Exhibition as I Was Not the Girl I Think I Was .... 25I Concede the Point, I Concede the Point, I Concede the Point ... 27Wonders and Mysteries of Animal Magentism Displayed (1791) as What I Want Is ... 29Rituals of the Bacabs as the Strange Case of Kate Abbott ... 31Birds of Ohio .... 33Reading Drops of Water: Showing the Mysteries of the Visible World (1873) as Love Poem ... 34The Book of Knowledge, the Experienced Farrier, &c. (1793) as The Best of All Possible Worlds ... 36The End of Pink ... 38~The Saint Girl's Sweetest Tortures... 40The Saint Girl Died and Went to Heaven and That Was One Problem After Another ... 41Ways In Which the Saint Girl Is and Is Not Me; Also So What If She Is and What If She Isn't ... 42The Saint Girl Discovers an Orgasmitron ... 44The Saint Girl Tries to Do the Right Thing ... 45The Saint Girl's Isochronal Error ... 46The Saint Girl Takes in Strays ... 47The Saint Girl Opens the Window and Closes It as She Pleases ... 48The Nimbuses of Devils ... 49~Or Perhaps Not ... 51My First Peacock ... 52Property Lines ... 53When Cortez Came .... 55Little Brown Jug, Look on the Bright Side .... 56My Peacock among the Phantasmagoria ... 57Whatever You Need ... 60Toad ... 62My Peacock's Daguerrotype ... 64Peter, Raised by Wolves (1726) ... 67Rene Descartes and the Clockwork Girl ... 70Peacock and Sister .... 73Little Lesson on How to Be ... 74