Matthew Olzmann was a 2006 and 2007 Kundiman Fellow. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Hanging Loose, Pebble Lake Review and elsewhere.

The Feral Issue

ns 73-74 | Fall 2009/Spring 2010

The "Feral Issue" presents work by a range of people, from those who have been doing animal studies all along to those newly exploring the field. If it has a leaning, it is to build a cultural materialist account of animals in our world. We hope that the writing here will give our readers a sense of what animal studies is and where it's going, and also add some new voices to its course.

Read this Issue

Published Spring/Summer 2008

Dead Beetles Stuffed with Cocaine

by Matthew Olzmann | ns 70

Despite being eight centimeters long
and having traveled (in a suitcase) over 7,000 miles,
you're still the cartel's smallest employee.  
But no one can question your devotion, no scale
can gauge your loyalty since your contract—
which you fulfill entirely—calls for your death.
Never mind that others died to get you this far.  
Farmhouses have been burned to the ground.  
Fathers and sons have been shot through the head
and buried together. In life, you brandished
your mandibles like antlers to threaten your rivals.  
Humans have rivals too, and to keep these rivals
from your cargo, we've produced shotguns,
chainsaws, and puppet governments.  Judges,
with pistols pressed against their temples,
have been given choices.  Cops have been handed
envelopes in alleys. From the outside, humanity
must look totally depraved.  But even in death,
you're trying to teach us something
about how things "look" aren't you? Don't judge
by exteriors, it's what's on the "inside" that counts.
Your "insides," plus those of the ninety-nine
other beetles you're packed with, have a street value
of approximately $11,270, not bad for members
of the Coleoptera order.  Your next of kin
can claim your remains at the Customs Office
in the Netherlands. They'll recognize you as the one
surrounded by a bunch of hollow beetles
in a plastic bag with an airtight seal.  
There's a yellow "evidence" sticker.
There's an agent with a clipboard, sleeping at his desk.
There's a refrigerator to keep you cool.

MR BOOKS

Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.

Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.

Purchase Critics at Work.