Sometimes I get lost.
All the time.

– John Bailey

I Know What You Can Lose

As its title implies, I Know What You Can Lose is an ode to what isn’t there. Loss is rife throughout this collection. Among the missing? Family, animals, a potential love connection with Elvis, and sometimes the narrators themselves—but also conventional spelling and grammar. As readers, we hardly mourn the latter, thanks to subversive snippets like “I pout it into a glass” (“Talk To Your Boss”) and “I wanted to be a doctor to stick kids on their arm” (“When I Grow Up”). Yet again, Cow Tipping authors complicate our notions of absence and presence. Perhaps no one puts it better than one author who declares, simply: “I like blank” (“I Go To Sleeping”).

 

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