Butcher's Sugar [Paperback]

Poetry. LGBT Studies. With a beauty purged of sweetness, the voices of BUTCHER'S SUGAR sing of the sublime in the debased, violence and desire, the truth of whatever is rank with the carcass of mystery. Moving from childhood through adulthood, these poems re-inhabit and reclaim myths about the body and the self.

Perhaps one turns to Christ or the pagan gods as an escape from the abject real of the body's stench. Perhaps to make love to a man is to always make love to the boy hidden underneath, forgotten. This need to both adore and kill what we no longer recognize within ourselves. Our bodies broken into, publicly shamed. Unmask the centurions, the butchers, and perhaps you'd instantly recognize their faces, Brad Richard suggests, if only you had his eyes to see. —Timothy Liu