Nikolopoulos, Angelo: Obscenely Yours

Alice James Books, paperback Publication Date: April 16, 2013 Publisher Marketing:  This fearless debut transcends the obscene with its self-conscious probing of sexual identity. Navigating each line with a tender awareness and a luminous honesty, Angelo Nikolopoulos exposes the complex worlds of forbidden desire and vulnerability. His lyric poems boldly defy social norms with their uninhibited passion for revealing the tangled intricacies of beauty and shame. From "Take the Body Out" But I love the body.Even before the arm and leg buds appeared in the fifth week after they made meinside the mouth's outline my tongue's rough draftwhere I'd first learn pleasure and need through the lips in sequence--liquids before solids, milk before steel-tip and split pea soup, cotton-edged quiltto stubbled frame of mouth. I love the bodybookended by introduction and conclusion where we learned in high schoolto imbed our details: in his beech-blond desk bored with Pythagorashe'd lean forward and I'd l