At the Mercy of the Flies
Published on 28. April 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
100 pages
978-1-948552-20-2 (ISBN)
Description
At the Mercy of the Flies renders the mundanity of daily life as a series of dislocations. In brief, lucid scenes, these poems map estrangement and excess onto surreal worlds where ambulances play Katy Perry, pearls rain from the sky, and every screen glows with impossible promises. What emerges is a record of survival written in the margins of collapse. Anchored in the author's experiences with depression and the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, At the Mercy of the Flies charts the cartographies of a life and a nation in freefall. No party lasts forever-not even America.
More details
Person
Matt McBride is the author of two full-length collections, City of Incandescent Light (Black Lawrence, 2018) and At the Mercy of the Flies (Half Mystic, 2026), as well as four chapbooks. His most recent, Prerecorded Weather, co-written with Noah Falck, is available from Survision Books. He is the winner of the James Tate Prize, the St. Lawrence Book Award, and the Ohio Chapbook Award. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council grant, an Elliston Poetry Fellowship, and a Writers in the Heartland residency. Currently, he lives in Chambersburg, PA, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Wilson College. Find him online at www.mattmcbridepoetry.com.