A daring and intimate new book by the poet and memoirist Nick Flynn, "a champion of contemporary American poetry" ( Newpages ) . . . the take from his bank jobs, all of it will come to me, if I can just get him to draw me a map, if I can find the tree, if I can find the shovel. And the house, the mansion he grew up in, soon a lawyer will pass a key across a walnut desk, but even this lawyer will not be able to tell me where this mansion is. ―from "Kafka" In My Feelings , Nick Flynn makes no claims on anyone else's. These poems inhabit a continually shifting sense of selfhood, in the attempt to contain quicksilver realms of emotional energy―from grief and panic to gratitude and understanding. “From the first moment I looked up from a page Nick Flynn had written on, I was a goner: I wasn't where I used to be; I went somewhere with him, into consciousness itself, into time, into a story so shattered that only poetry could begin to tell it. Here he is again, writing as if his life depends on it, using every trick he can find to carve the tunnel through the mountain. Words are what he uses; silence is the sound they make. Nick Flynn keeps resuscitating himself, and in doing so he refreshes and reaffirms the personal lyric as a crucial and necessary art. I read Nick Flynn's poetry to feel alive.” ― Marie Howe “Each word is a lit match, a thrown stone, a howling blast, a choking torrent. Flynn has forged daringly intimate and clarion poems of conscience.” ― Booklist on Nick Flynn “[Flynn's] books of poetry-- Some Ether , Blind Huber , The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands --all ask difficult questions and leave us with a beautiful acceptance that there is often no answer at all, that our memories arrange things in ways that may or may not offer closure. There is something about his work that allows us to exhale, to sit in our own messes and be okay.” ― Rumpus on Nick Flynn NICK FLYNN's work―which includes Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Memoir, and the poetry collections Blind Huber and Some Ether―has been translated into thirteen languages. My Feelings Poems By Nick Flynn Graywolf Press Copyright © 2015 Nick Flynn All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-55597-710-8 Contents MY FEELINGS, [one], BELLY OF THE BEAST, AK-47, KAFKA, THE WHEN & THE HOW, TANTALUS, [two], BEADS OF SWEAT, AQUARIUM, FATHER, INSECT, MY TRIGGERS, MY JOKE, WHEN I WAS A GIRL, HARBOR, [three], CATHEDRAL OF SALT, MY BLINDNESS, MY FEELINGS, PUT THE LOAD ON ME, POLAROID, [four], A NOTE ON THE PERIODIC TABLE, HOMILY, GRAVITY, IF THIS IS YOUR FINAL DESTINATION, [five], ONCE THE ELEPHANT IS GONE, THE DAY LOU REED DIED, ALCOHOLISM, MOFUKU, THE INCOMPREHENSIBILTY, [six], THE WASHING OF THE BODY, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, THE BOOK OF ASH, FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES, EPITHALAMION, MARATHON, CHAPTER 1      BELLY OF THE BEAST     Here again     at the edge of what was,     the river held back     by the stones it has carried,     the knife in your hand     brimming     rain. Inside this day     without beginning or end, it cannot     stand still inside you.     One day I'll leave — not you     but all this — this hunger     that pushes each wave. AK-47 1 love lays hold of everything 2 & y es all the houses whiten in the sun just as they whiten yes in the snow & yes from above each looks like a tombstone yes just as a graveyard from above is a city yes the world is one big graveyard after all 3 a phone rings in a labyrinth 4 this house, unpainted still — when you go back, if you go back, if you can find your way, it won't, it cannot [your hand on the door] be as you remember ... 5 what need is there to build a labyrinth when [your hand on the door] the entire universe is one? 6 the amnesiac in the film last night tattooed words on his body — november. ohio. rain — to remember he was grieving his dead wife 7 this house you grew out of you grew up inside it 8 it lays hold of everything, it tears the top off a mountain, calls it volcano , pulls out the ore, lays it in fire, forges it with its hammer — it can be shaped into anything 9 inside this house a gun was cocked, uncocked, picked up, put down, aimed, lowered 10 a phone rings in a labyrinth, the dealer taps the tip of his blade to your heart [surely we have been born for a reason] — see how his mouth opens to let the words out, words we cannot see, his mouth as dark as alpha centauri 11 ALPHA: the first CENTAURI: warrior YOU: a small part of this unending MOUTH: light seeps from inside you 12 the amnesiac's days are reduced to tracking down the man who killed his wife but the story is told backward & the more we see the more it seems that this is just the story he tells himself, that he cannot even remember his wife, the wires are crossed, maybe he is the one who killed her & now he is using vengeance as the engine to drive his body through time 13 & y