If you think of poetry as something over-precious and pretentious, read Nickole Brown's "The Scat of It" (2018), which is about exactly what you think it is: "The shit of it, the slick of it, the beetle’s tumbling joy / the bear’s berry slush of it, the coyote’s ghost white dry of it—undigested fur, nothing more / hot-pressed into a turd—that nothing-wasted prayer." How's that for rich nature imagery? Brown is the author of the collections Sister and Fanny Says as well as the recent chapbook To Those Who Were Our First Gods. She'll read here with her wife Jessica Jacobs (Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going), past winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. by Joule Zelman