Toucans in the Arctic

“You will remember the day you discovered this book.”—Suzanne Cleary

Mildred's in the Big House for art forgery
and Claude, our high school Prometheus, is strapped to a rock
in the Peruvian Andes of his locked ward.
As for me, I'm dying
of lost causes on Park Avenue South,
triangulating acts of God for Metropolitan Life,
having come a long way for nothing . . .

In this lyric case study of tumult and tranquility, the dominant voice is of a man both enthralled and appalled by the vast national park of the psyche as he scrambles across its eerie landscapes of identity and marriage.

Scott Coffel directs the University of Iowa’s Hanson Center for Technical Communication.