Dancing with Hedgehogs

© Virgil Kay, 2014

Dancing with Hedgehogs
Fowlpox Press. Canada.
December 2014. Scroll here.

When hedgehogs get caught stealing Cheetos, it’s easier to sneak boys in than to slip girls out. To wit, all manners of poetry, rhymed and free ranging, traditional and so contemporary that the assemblages rival green peaches, twinkle stinking little stars in this chapbook.

Dancing with Hedgehogs brings proof that the too often wished for squealing, self-anointing, and keratin-stiff aspects of existence, thought to be indigenous to both spiny mammals and verse, get left behind when puppies’ playful stance, joggers’ chant, or other oddly pitched “conversations,” muck with the gears and levers of cosmic meaning. In brief, this text espouses that unwarranted cultural snobbery serves neither man nor beast.

Accordingly, Dancing with Hedgehogs strives to focus our mentations on hip hop among the branches, means for deconstructing literature’s intercultural mythos, and ever ubiquitous starlight. If this collection’s readers snort, guffaw, or cry a bit en route, it’s okay; sometimes we win, sometimes we fail. Nonetheless, always, it suits us to tuck into a stanza or ten and to embrace an assortment of favorable and challenging goings on.

Preface

Introduction: Sussing it out on Planet Betty

I. Despair

1.1 Hedgehogs Stealing Cheetos: A Lunchroom Ballad

1.2 About those Codfish

1.3 Because of the Debauchery in Their Homes: Unwarranted Cultural Snobbery

1.4 Hip Hop Music among the Branches

1.5 Deconstructing Literature’s Intercultural Mythos

1.6 Conversation

1.7 Fish Grill

1.8 I Don't Think I’d Like Being Dead

 

II. Hope

2.1 So, Sometimes We Fail

2.2 Jogger’s Chant

2.3 Puppies’ Playful Stance

2.4 For Annmarie: Loving Cysts Forever and Always

2.5 Eventualities

2.6 Principally Relic

2.7 Twinkle Stinking Little Star

2.8 It’s Easier to Sneak Boys In

Conclusion: Eating Peas

About the Author

Credits