Heavy Petting

Book excerpt: Poetry. "HEAVY PETTING is a hell of a sexy book. A sexy and generous book. A book where thighs are 'spread like warm apple butter,' where one eye is so close to another there is no sight, where we don't 'feel clean unless...burning,' where the not forgotten magic of the Mississippi River, 'giant but quiet' makes lovers fall asleep inside each other, where when it is 'too cold to sunbathe' the speaker writes letters to skin—the whole thing a kind of 'relationship porn.' Or maybe this book is feeling porn... So, let's do it. Let's live a burning life. Read this book. Be touched and burned and be happy about it. We don't feel clean until we are burning anyway."—Dorothea Lasky "If you wake up tomorrow early and Frank O'Hara is a Sony Walkman, Xanax is the new Surgeon General, and someone you're not sure you recognize as your beloved is writing his/her name on the inside of your lip, don't be alarmed, you're reading HEAVY PETTING by Gregory Sherl."—Matt Hart