His poems slept where they ate. Often, they slept upon the stubble of what they had eaten. Whatever sang nearby they sang, too, without imitating. They drooled. Bristled. Scratched themselves in moonstruck pleasure. Hissed. Hucked up tar. Hucked up lint. Hucked it down. They could not keep their tongues in their mouths or out of their own clover-scented anuses. They were warren-born with their sticky eyes and ears open. They shed in all seasons.

Notes on his poems by a guy who observed them in their natural habitat. in 57 Octaves Below Middle C by Kevin McIlvoy

I dynamited the secret daily deepening love for learning inside any of you who had the elemental need for beauty and brutality within. Strictly according to my orders, you obediently rode your hands and the nubs of your pens over the surface of the page in order to not enter, not swim in where your unsleeping secrets and first and final doubts might appear unhidden.

A testicular self-examination, in 57 Octaves Below Middle C by Kevin McIlvoy

we had no screwdriver     a wind was picking up and he and I had no screwdriver Abraham         you have an email address Abraham but you're still blind as a tadpole Abraham Abraham       the wind made me think of how a page of newspaper turns by itself if you look at it hard and long on a windy day after you've gone almost forever without sleeping

Mrs. Wiggins' altocumulus undulatus asperatus in 57 Octaves Below Middle C by Kevin McIlvoy

Photo taken in Kohl's Department Store, Seekonk MA

Everyone in the zonule—throngs and throngs of people-pennants—wavered. It's not the right word             wavered how does anyone tell anything believable without the right word? They wavered as the man walked closer to me       and closer.        The toddler wanted to see and so he walked at the man's side—he stood on the bare spot of carpet—quiet now the toddler looked at me closely and without any question in his throng of faces.

All of the stones all at the same time, in 57 Octaves Below Middle C by Kevin McIlvoy

When I got the job as The Silence I had the talent. The uniform didn't fit, so it perfectly emphasized my beer gut, which had a side-to-side and up-down flap, had a happy snout, gave off glare, produced glow. I was junkfooding a lot—         it was right after I left my wife     and I was pretty naturally comically repugnant.         I was. I want to say this about the pants, that the pants are not everything like the director might tell you, but they matter, they should hurt, the fit should hurt, the pants have to be in The Sausage Style if you're The Silence. It's the job, that's all I'm saying is it's the job and when you start to fit it differently do something else.

When will we speak of Jesus? in 57 Octaves Below Middle C by Kevin McIlvoy