The Zoo

Joanie Mackowski’s debut collection of poetry is meditative, vivid, sometimes weird. Turning an idiosyncratic eye to the inhabitants of zoos and fish tanks, cafes and cemeteries, she illuminates details that make the familiar seem strange. An egret stands "still as a glass of milk"; iceberg lettuce is a "vegetable leviathan" that "extends beneath the dinner table / an unseen, monstrous green"; a bald eagle may "love a jet?— / or worship them all, or mock them, rigid / freaks that never linger."