Python with a Dog Inside It

Set on the marshlands of working-class southern New Jersey, Python with a Dog Inside It, the debut collection by poet Max McDonough, traces the tangled story of two gay brothers as they endeavor to survive their mother’s erratic and escalating violence. They retreat to the privacy of suburban woods and swamps, a world of their own glimmering with ruin and possibility: abandoned furniture, mud-caked jewelry, a time machine. The poems in this collection occupy, as Judith Herman describes it, the space between ＂the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud.＂ Ultimately, Python with a Dog Inside It is not only a story of survival, but one of redemption. By proclaiming the events of a particular, harrowing childhood, McDonough invents a future beyond it, one marked by radical openness, hope’s flame brighter for the darkness.

Max McDonough’s debut poetry collection, Python with a Dog Inside It, won the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His poetry has been published in AGNI, Ecotone, Northwest Review, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere, including a Boys in the Band crossover feature in T Magazine, guest edited by Danez Smith. His prose has been nominated for a James Beard Award, and has appeared in The New York Times, Food52, and Flipboard’s ’ 10 for Today, ’ among others. He earned his MFA from Vanderbilt University and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.