Ignatz Domesticus

Ignatz Domesticus

By Monica Youn Monica Youn
The one day she noticed the forest had begun to bleed into her waking life.

There were curved metal plates on the trees to see around corners.

She thought to brush her hand against his thigh.

She thought to trace the seam of his jeans with her thumbnail.

The supersaturated blues were beginning to pixillate around the edges, to
               become a kind of grammar.

She placed a saucer of water under her lamp and counted mosquitoes as
               they drowned.

Soot amassed in drifts in the corners of the room.

She pressed her thumb into the hollow of his throat for a while and then
               let him go.

Monica Youn, “Ignatz Domesticus” from Ignatz. Copyright © 2010 by Monica Youn. Reprinted by permission of Four Ways Books.

Source: Ignatz (Four Way Books, 2010)

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Poet Monica Youn

POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic

Subjects Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Biography

Monica Youn’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Tin House and in Cue: A Journal of Prose Poetry. Her awards include the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Her books of poetry include Barter (2003) and Ignatz (2010), a series of poems loosely based on the mouse character from George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip of the 1920s-30s, was a finalist . . .

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SUBJECT Relationships, Men & Women, Nature, Arts & Sciences, Reading & Books, Social Commentaries, Popular Culture

POET’S REGION U.S., Mid-Atlantic

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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