Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. I'm Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is Amy Gersler.

Her most recent book of poems, Medicine, has recently come out from Penguin, as are available

Crown of Weeds and Nervestorm.

Carnegie Mellon University Press has reissued an earlier book, Bitter Angel,

and so she is in the happy position as a poet of having a good deal of her work available.

In order to leap right in, I thought I would ask Amy to read the first poem in her

book, Medicine, which is a kind of specialty of hers. Among my favorite poems of hers are

these articulations to babies, and this is called Prayer for Jackson. Amy Gersler.

Prayer for Jackson. Dear Lord, Fire-eating custodian of my soul, author of Hermaphrodites,

Radishes, and Arizona's Rosie Sandstone, please protect this wet-cheeked baby from disabling

griefs. Help him sense when to rise to his feet and make his desires known, and when to hit

the proverbial dirt. On nights it pleases thee to keep him sleepless, summon crickets, frogs,

and your chorus of nocturnal birds, so he won't conclude. to keep him sleepless, summon crickets, frogs,

and your chorus of nocturnal birds,

so he won't conclude the earth's gone mute.

Make him astute as Egyptian labyrinths that keep the dead's privacy in violet.

Give him as mother's swimming ability.

...