Joseph Millar's first book, Overtime, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; his second book, Fortune, has just been published by Eastern Washington University Press.

The Feral Issue

ns 73-74 | Fall 2009/Spring 2010

The "Feral Issue" presents work by a range of people, from those who have been doing animal studies all along to those newly exploring the field. If it has a leaning, it is to build a cultural materialist account of animals in our world. We hope that the writing here will give our readers a sense of what animal studies is and where it's going, and also add some new voices to its course.

Read this Issue

Published Fall 2006

Last Supper

by Joseph Miller | ns 67

Now the thief pardoned on Calvary orders
his final meal, thief of amphetamines and cheap vodka,
bloodstains darkening the store clerk's vest.

In Huntsville, Texas, April 1998
the thief wants fried chicken and jelly beans. He orders
a cold Dr Pepper. He wants to be near people talking,
afraid he's going to be sick.

                                 In Varner, Arkansas, 2001
the kidnapper orders peach cobbler,
Jolly Ranchers and birthday cake. He keeps
his eyes turned away while he eats and won't
stop jiggling his knee.

                                  In Stark, Florida, March, 2002
the murderer orders a dozen fried eggs,
white gravy, biscuits, sweet ice tea, then sits
in the aqueous light of his cell: thin ghost

baptized in extravagant spit, exiled
from the one home he knows,
the taste of desire still alive on his tongue.

MR BOOKS

Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.

Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.

Purchase Critics at Work.