Bad Animals

Tom Cull’s debut collection is equal parts zoo, fun-house, and curio cabinet. A mouthy badger tells off a search committee, a family of beavers conspire to commit murder, a celebrity seal slips his cage, and a flock of seabirds pay a visit to Ripley’s Aquarium. In these poems, human and animal spaces overlap, often marking moments of transgression, rebellion, escape, and capture. The rural logic of everyday violence stands in relief to urban hyper-spectacles of animal incursion. Home and habitat are flooded with invasive species, cute animals videos, and rising tides.Cull’s lyricism ranges from the intimate to the mythopoeic; speaking in the language of mimicry, ventriloquism, tall tale, and zinger. Within this stunning debut, animals collide, conspire, and transform, creeping through the narrative spaces of these poems and intimating apocalypse as both end and beginning