The Animal Within

Author: Katherine Yets Publisher: Unsolicited Press (2021) The Animal Within is filled with poems that want to swim together, focusing on animal and human nature. A few are ekphrastic, based on photography by Jaimie Huycke and Dennis Liddell. Dive in and readers find a world where horses speak their minds, crawdaddies sing, and mermaids find love. Wolves howl "ahwoo at the full strawberry harvest moon in June," and birds do more than flap their wings, but rather create a voice for the oppressed. Humans step in, personas based off the author, and consider loss, depression, and love—inner-self mixed with creature habits—scratching down a lover's back or crying in a zoo. One persona connects with water, skinny-dipping her way into a galaxy reflection, "as quiet as you would expect it to be [she] sends a ripple through the moon." Hawaiian Goddesses tell their story about how the Yoni Crater came to be with a crash. Nature takes note and gets noticed, exploring transcendental and organic as