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    Previously Owned
    Previously Owned
    Previously Owned
    Ebook98 pages32 minutes

    Previously Owned

    By Nathan McClain

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    In his daring sophomore collection, Nathan McClain interrogates his speaker's American heritage, history, and responsibility. Investigating myth, popular culture, governance, and more, Previously Owned connects a villanelle cataloging Sisyphus's circular workflow to a Die Hard persona poem critiquing police brutality and joins complex pastorals to the stunning sequence entitled "They said I was an alternate," which recounts the author's experience serving on jury duty. Though McClain's muscular lyric explores a wide range of topics, the intensity of his attention and the profundity of his care remain constant-the final page describes a young girl in a diner, ringing the bell at the host stand, "just to hear it sing, the same / song, the only song // it knows." Insofar as this collection scrutinizes one's own culpability and responsibility in this country, interested in the natural world and beauty, as well as what beauty distracts us from, it does so in the hopes of reimagining inheritance, of leaving our children a different song.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFour Way Books
    Release dateSep 15, 2022
    ISBN9781954245396
    Previously Owned

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      Book preview

      Previously Owned - Nathan McClain

      Also by Nathan McClain

      Scale

      Previously Owned

      Nathan McClain

      Four Way Books

      Tribeca

      For Jessica

      and for our children

      Copyright © 2022 Nathan McClain

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: McClain, Nathan, author.

      Title: Previously owned / Nathan McClain.

      Description: [New York] : Four Way Books, [2022]

      Identifiers: LCCN 2022003864 | ISBN 9781954245266 (paperback) | ISBN 9781954245396 (epub)

      Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3613.C35724 P74 2022 | DDC 811/.6--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003864

      This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

      Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations including the NEA, NEA Cares, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

      We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

      Contents

      Boy Pulling a Thorn from His Foot

      i.

      Mafia Myth

      The Country

      Sisyphus: To-do List

      Self Portrait as the Movie Inception

      Where the View Was Clearer

      Myth of the Bear

      Now that I live in this part of the country,

      The World Is Full

      The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

      The flowers

      Labor Day: Brighton Beach

      Midlife Aubade

      Nocturne from the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores

      ii.

      Days after the Election, We Finally Discuss the Weather

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      The sentence

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      They said I was an alternate,

      iii.

      Sergeant Al Powell, 30 Years Later

      At the Park, a Boy’s Birthday Party

      What You Call It

      Myth of the Lighthouse

      The Ferry

      Aubade Ending with a Pacemaker

      Myth of the Cow

      Multiple Choice

      Love Poem

      Moths

      Against Melancholy

      A Public Service Announcement

      In the Gardening Section of Home Depot

      Love Elegy with Sunoco and Rand McNally Road Atlas

      Poem from a Rest Stop Diner

      Notes

      If you start your history with slavery, everything since then seems like progress.

      —Dr. John Henrik Clarke

                                          "It is difficult

      to

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