The Taxidermist’s Cut is the winner of the 2014 Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry and a finalist for Lambda Literary’s 29th Annual Award in Gay Poetry.
The Taxidermist’s Cut
Rajiv Mohabir
The Taxidermist’s Cut inhabits the experience of a queer brown youth awakening sexually in a racist, anti-immigrant matrix. As an Indo-Caribbean, the queer-countried speaker is illegible as an “Indian” as well as an “American.” Haunted by his migration narrative, the speaker must survive a palimpsest of violence: violences enacted upon him both by himself and others. This is a collection of twisted love stories-as-slits that exposes the meat and bone of trauma and relief. Mohabir draws from source texts such as animal tracking guides and taxidermy manuals to highlight themes of discovery, preservation, and survival on all fronts.
from “Cover Scent,” from The Taxidermist’s Cut:
He lies naked with another boy in a clearing of palmettos and sand pines. They touch each other with rabbit skin gloves. Today: the odium of salt and pheromones. To erase himself he rubs the ashes on his arms and chest. Outside an Eastern Cottontail hides three kits....