ABOUT THIS BOOK

Blood Work reveals what happens to the self when the body is compromised by illness. These poems explore the struggle to remain whole in the shadow of Crohn’s disease and to make a home for oneself in the body and in the world.

Finalist, Poetry, Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year Awards

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Siegel was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He teaches literature and creative writing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

REVIEWS

“This unexpected book—a genuine contribution to the literature of illness—centers on containment: how we contain our blood, how blood is contained in tubes and vials, how sometimes we do not seem contained by our bodies, and sometimes the body seems to contain nothing, and even how in the face of control or self-reliance leaking away, we might manage to contain ourselves, to feel held, to feel held in place. The deceptive directness of Siegel’s debut is remarkable; in his capable hands, illness reveals how barely contained any human being is, and how we reach, alone and together, for whatever will hold us.”—Mark Doty

“Siegel’s poems see the world with an immediacy and compassion that could only come from the decision to be vulnerable. It’s such a simple-seeming principle of poetry—yet it is as rare as hen’s teeth. I honor this young poet for the freshness and skill in these poems, his allegiance to the most unpretentious areas of experience, and his courage-teaching heart. Blood Work is a wonderful first book.”—Tony Hoagland

“These poems resist the dualities of lyric versus narrative, confessional versus impersonal, real against surreal, formal/improvisational, comic/sad. Matthew Siegel manages to tick off all the boxes at once, while remaining compulsively readable. The trick that he’s pulled off is to make a book that simultaneously tickles you and shakes you by the scruff of your neck.”—Lucia Perillo, Felix Pollak Prize judge

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I
“fox goes to the fox hospital”
Blood Work
At the community acupuncture clinic
[Sometimes I don’t know if I’m having a feeling]
[And sometimes I know I’m having a feeling]
[The boy with the blackbird stitched over his heart is sad]
The electric body

II
At the edge of the field
[The heart is a dumbwaiter]
[My pills doze until I wake them]
The Heater Repair-Woman
Such Is the Sickness
What I Fail to Mention
At the Vietnamese Massage Parlor
Mother puts on my lipstick
On the way to the airport I fail to tell my father I left some meat in the refrigerator

III
[What world are you in, Mother, when you sleep]
Weather of the Body
Life Guarding
Faster
In the Dentist’s Chair
Soap
Mother washes me in the tub
Matthew you’re leaving again so soon

IV
Watching Christmas Trees Burn, Ocean Beach
For Bryan, 13, who sleeps through Li-Young Lee
The Girl Downstairs Is Crying
At the Farmers’ Market
Love Parade
By the Flowers at the Supermarket
With my face buried in supermarket flowers I spent the entire evening
[It’s true what you’ve heard about my mouth.]
Overlooking the City

V
[And because the want is the size of a building]
Living with You
In the bathroom
[He’s looking for answers he’s looking for the rough dark]
[In the kitchen Mom stands with her back to me]
[He’s become too large for his childhood bed]
Mother Drives Me in the Rain
Rain

Acknowledgments

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