Unbelievable Alligator

David Cameron’s L.P. is a short collection of poems exploring variations on the Lord’s Prayer. Born in Canada, raised in Brooklyn by communists, Cameron accidentally become indoctrinated in Protestantism at 11 years old after his mother had him join a church choir in lieu of singing lessons. By 13 he was baptized and confirmed entirely of his own volition.

Skipping the needle forward several tracks and a handful of years, long absent from any church, Cameron discovers the Lord’s Prayer has lodged itself permanently in his brain. He recites it furtively before sleeping, during anxious moments on airplane runways, and through existential crises. Given the work in Cameron’s other books of poems: Flowers of Bad, a complete false translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, and18 Twenties, it comes as no surprised that the words of the prayer, so often repeated and turned over, would begin to take on new shapes and altered appearances.