Cy Gist Press

CGP 30: Elseworlds
by Chris McCreary  (20 pp. Saddle-Stitched) $6 ppd.

Cy Gist Press is tickled pink to announce the release of Chris McCreary’s Elseworlds.  Born during the fury of Hurricane Sandy, Elseworlds likewise disrupts business-as-usual.  It is an “Underdark” beneath the surface of suburbia, teeming with cast-off popular culture and the shadows of good ideas.  McCreary’s poems both alienate and invite, are never opaque but smokily translucent as they deal with the problems of desire, nostalgia, intimacy, mortality and a wandering soul who has taken root. 

"A Mannered Thing"

Chris McCreary 

O Clockwork Golem, forgive us
our skins. See fat man burn his bald head,
flaunt paunch under too-tight tee. Watch thin

girlfriend hand him Pabst, half-ironic wet
nurse to summer’s swaddled infant. We stew
in our meat, pink & simple deep inside our city’s

steeping moist ammonia reek. Last week
the street caved in & what we saw sank down
into the Underdark. This morning I woke

to my son screaming that our dog was dead
in his bedroom. I have no dog.
I have this fear you’ll scoff each time

my thighs stick to vinyl. I’ve never even heard
you breathe, but I can picture your tick.