Poetry. "HEAVY PETTING is a hell of a sexy book. A sexy and generous book. A book where thighs are 'spread like warm apple butter,' where one eye is so close to another there is no sight, where we don't 'feel clean unless...burning,' where the not forgotten magic of the Mississippi River, 'giant but quiet' makes lovers fall asleep inside each other, where when it is 'too cold to sunbathe' the speaker writes letters to skin—the whole thing a kind of 'relationship porn.' Or maybe this book is feeling porn... So, let's do it. Let's live a burning life. Read this book. Be touched and burned and be happy about it. We don't feel clean until we are burning anyway."—Dorothea Lasky "If you wake up tomorrow early and Frank O'Hara is a Sony Walkman, Xanax is the new Surgeon General, and someone you're not sure you recognize as your beloved is writing his/her name on the inside of your lip, don't be alarmed, you're reading HEAVY PETTING by Gregory Sherl."—Matt Hart

Print edition

"Forgive my bluntness, but...Goddamn, Sam Sax can write some poems. Devastating, comic, inventive, weird, dangerous, smart as hell. I could talk about the diction sometimes glass and sometimes bouquet. Or the syntax jagged here, balletic there. Or the metaphors, good lord. But the bottom line is that when reading the poems in A GUIDE TO UNDRESSING YOUR MONSTERS, one after the next, I kept saying to myself, probably twisting my face a little bit or squirming in my seat, "Goddamn, Sam Sax can write some poems." Ross Gay

At last comes the hilarious and heartwarming sequel to the national bestseller Always Kiss with Your Whiskers. Four-color illustrations combine with Bumper the cat's all new advice for the amorous--from a uniquely cat's-eye point of view. The result is a peerless guide to the art of affection sure to elicit purrs.

This book will take the reader through each phase of sharing her life with a dog-from picking her canine companion, to purchasing him, to making a home for him. It will offer insights on shopping for your pet, from the necessities to the over-the-top extras. This book will also address relationship issues, including integrating your dog into your human relationships and combining multi-dog or multi-pet households, and the myriad of activities to do with your new best friend. Birthday parties or Bark Mitzvahs, anyone? Heavy Petting ends with suggestions for dealing with the loss of a dog and how to move on. An opportunity for love, shopping, and parties-Heavy Petting has it all!A portion of the proceeds from each book goes to service dog charities, Guiding Eyes for the Blind and Service Dogs of Virginia.

Clare Pollard wrote most of these poems while still at school in Bolton. Too young, perhaps, to expect anyone to take her seriously, but young enough to question that assumption and much else besides. Her poems are fresh and energetic, barbed with a modern girl's natural cynicism, but tempered with open-eyed hope as well as wry acceptance. In The Heavy-Petting Zoo, the male of the species is shown in all his preening glory, his growling and posturing exposed but also given marks out of ten. The book gives us the world according to Clare Pollard writing as a teenager, an insider's in-your-face portrayal of the tarnished lives of today's bright young things.

On female sexuality