Read This: Cadaver Dogs by Rebecca Loudon

If David Lynch is looking for an idea for his next film, Rebecca Loudon's bizarre, enthralling, heartbreaking Cadaver Dogs ($15, No Tell Books) would be excellent source material. Reading these poems is the equivalent of being swept off to Oz then falling down Alice's rabbit hole, except the Lollipop Guild is on strike and the Cheshire Cat is missing some teeth.

The poems in Cadaver Dogs are full of wounded children and the stunted, haunted adults they become. Animals of all kinds show up unexpectedly, whether it's bears making phone calls or buzzing bees who nest in hair, Loudon is a "whisperer" when it comes to summoning creatures as her muse.

  Those who read the Radish King blog know that in her other life, Loudon is a musician. Both major and minor chords are struck here -- full orchestras and Glenn Gould alone at his piano. These poems are dark fairy tales, and my guess is that if Anne Sexton were still alive, this is the kind of work she would be doing. Cadaver Dogs is an unsettling read, but you will return to it again and again for this visceral, vital poetry. To quote singer Imogen Heap...there is beauty in the breakdown.

The Eternal Leer of the Playground Bully

A clumsy ritual

you hang yourself

with your own striped tie.

You gnaw on leg of deer, rabbit, wild duck,

roasted turbot, grilled salmon. Hungry

for blood, you rub the stewed fruits

into your skin, fall asleep with the light on,

thumbsucker, biter.

Your father made you hunt.

You wanted to take me,

you were strong enough,

you had the goods.

Say it in 5 languages. Oberon

spools out of the kingfisher's mouth,

the mermaid's chorus. By the time

you noticed it was swollen,

ready to burst, a polyp

with double roots.

It was a prank.

It didn't mean a thing.

Sometimes people just die

accidentally.