Gabriel Fried Featured Reader at Duff's on Monday, May 21

Gabriel Fried will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Duff's, 392 N. Euclid, on Monday, May 21.

Also featured will be Eileen G'Sell and Catherine Rankovic.

Musical guest will be Michael Coleman.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Gabriel Fried is poetry editor at Persea Books and author of Making the New Lamb Take, which was named a top ten poetry collection of 2007 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He currently teaches courses on poetry and publishing at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Boy Bites Dog

This small animal is mine, this son
who will not stop himself from biting my dog.

He bites her like a dog bites a rabbit:
tender, lethal, shaking with laughter

when he twists her neck as if to break it.
He loves to fill his mouth with her

instead of air, relishing the gag
of fur it takes to keep her. Muscled

and tall, she could defend herself—
upend him or sink her own teeth in.

But I smell the gamey scent she gets
before a storm as if it’s slaughter.

She can’t move him. And I am just a man.

-- Gabriel Fried

(Originally published in Lumberyard #4.)