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Beyond the Bones
Poems by Neil Carpathios. This book was a finalist in the 2009 FutureCycle Press Book Prize competition. This edition is in all but extremely minor respects the same as the edition, ISBN 978-1938853258, which supersedes it, except for the manufacturer.
- GenresPoetry
86 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2009
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280 people want to read
About the author
Neil Carpathios
16 books8 followersNeil Carpathios earned an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has been awarded various grants and fellowships, including three Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Poetry. He currently teaches at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 25, 2013
Beyond the Bones by Neil Carpathios is brilliant prose with a couple of factoids thrown in the mix, made a poetry masterpiece.
My Son and I Explore the Nature of Suffering The author made me smile with this one. Kids say some of the best things in life.
★The Egg
★Cruelty
★Hunger
★Any Given Sunday
★We Call It Roadkill
★The Voice Inside
★Dear Future " you're reading this before I even finished. You really do care"
★The Obvious Never Tips His Hat "Did I fall through a trapdoor in the sky? Or is that the residue of too many cartoons?"
My Son and I Explore the Nature of Suffering The author made me smile with this one. Kids say some of the best things in life.
★The Egg
★Cruelty
★Hunger
★Any Given Sunday
★We Call It Roadkill
★The Voice Inside
★Dear Future " you're reading this before I even finished. You really do care"
★The Obvious Never Tips His Hat "Did I fall through a trapdoor in the sky? Or is that the residue of too many cartoons?"
March 15, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
INSTEAD OF WRITING A POEM ABOUT WRITING A POEM,
I STEP OUTSIDE AND SMELL THE AIR
Rain-choked worms like severed veins
twist on the sidewalk.
I picture their tiny rooms
underground flooded, their miniature
stoves, books, pots and pans
bobbing up and down,
their furniture like rafts floating.
I wonder when the rain stops
if they find their way back
to assess damages.
Do they weep at the loss?
Do they scavenge to find their sopping
items? Do they build a new home,
starting over from scratch?
Do they talk about the tragedy,
have film footage and interviews
like hurricane victims on TV?
Do they blame it on some god
who maybe was bored and ornery,
who needed a little excitement?
I watch them carefully to see if they wiggle
frantically to find their washed-out husbands,
wives, sons and daughters. As a boy
I’d run outside, scoop them up,
house them in a jar. I’d give them
plenty of dirt and grass to keep them safe
until I took them fishing where I’d pierce them
in the head or heart with a barbed hook and see them
bleed and ooze and writhe. Then I let them slowly die
underwater, pray some even bigger creature
would finish them off. I sniff and smell
their nakedness. Smell concrete, damp soil,
drops exploding all around me. I go back inside
and start to scribble words, label things,
wonder if my ears could hear
would their screams be translatable.
TEN TO ONE
A worm has ten hearts,
which means they are romantic,
or at least able to love
a lot. You see one
in a robin’s beak or on
a sidewalk or in the crater
left by a rock.
You don’t think
of them as lovers,
as something that longs
for another of its kind.
Maybe underground
where we never see them
they live secret lives,
tunneling and tunneling
in search of each other
with burning passion.
They can afford
to be struck by Cupid’s
arrow without second-guessing
or doubt. Unlike us,
who have just one
that we try not to break
over and over.
INSTEAD OF WRITING A POEM ABOUT WRITING A POEM,
I STEP OUTSIDE AND SMELL THE AIR
Rain-choked worms like severed veins
twist on the sidewalk.
I picture their tiny rooms
underground flooded, their miniature
stoves, books, pots and pans
bobbing up and down,
their furniture like rafts floating.
I wonder when the rain stops
if they find their way back
to assess damages.
Do they weep at the loss?
Do they scavenge to find their sopping
items? Do they build a new home,
starting over from scratch?
Do they talk about the tragedy,
have film footage and interviews
like hurricane victims on TV?
Do they blame it on some god
who maybe was bored and ornery,
who needed a little excitement?
I watch them carefully to see if they wiggle
frantically to find their washed-out husbands,
wives, sons and daughters. As a boy
I’d run outside, scoop them up,
house them in a jar. I’d give them
plenty of dirt and grass to keep them safe
until I took them fishing where I’d pierce them
in the head or heart with a barbed hook and see them
bleed and ooze and writhe. Then I let them slowly die
underwater, pray some even bigger creature
would finish them off. I sniff and smell
their nakedness. Smell concrete, damp soil,
drops exploding all around me. I go back inside
and start to scribble words, label things,
wonder if my ears could hear
would their screams be translatable.
TEN TO ONE
A worm has ten hearts,
which means they are romantic,
or at least able to love
a lot. You see one
in a robin’s beak or on
a sidewalk or in the crater
left by a rock.
You don’t think
of them as lovers,
as something that longs
for another of its kind.
Maybe underground
where we never see them
they live secret lives,
tunneling and tunneling
in search of each other
with burning passion.
They can afford
to be struck by Cupid’s
arrow without second-guessing
or doubt. Unlike us,
who have just one
that we try not to break
over and over.
November 7, 2012
When I started reading the first poem, "Workers for the Lord," I thought, "Oh man, I hope this isn't going to be some sort of religious poetry book." It was about these "celestial" workers making human souls. It turned out okay though in that it was done in a lighthearted way. But I would have to say there was way too much God talk for my tastes. Or maybe I should correct that to say too much fluffy God talk. The kind you hear from people who believe but have no clue what they are believing in, like low-information believers.
The strength of the book is that the topics for the poems were interesting. Thus the four stars. It held my interest all the way through. The style is very conversational, lacking in any strong metaphors. So a purist for great poetry may not care for it. But it's accessible enough for the average poetry reader. And that's really not such a bad thing in a world filled with inaccessible poetry that quite often sucks.
The strength of the book is that the topics for the poems were interesting. Thus the four stars. It held my interest all the way through. The style is very conversational, lacking in any strong metaphors. So a purist for great poetry may not care for it. But it's accessible enough for the average poetry reader. And that's really not such a bad thing in a world filled with inaccessible poetry that quite often sucks.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews