Tabloid News

One afternoon when poet John Leax was standing in a grocery store checkout queue, a tabloid news headline beckoned: 'Leaping Turtles Invade US'. As he looked more closely at the accompanying image, two lines sprang into his imagination: Suppose one could believe the tabloid headlines; suppose the stories under them were true; and, Leax later wrote that 'true story'. Then he wrote another. And another. They are all collected in Tabloid News . As he wrote, Leax explored two linked impulses that he found in the tabloids: desire and fear. We desire connection to beings other than ourselves. Yet we fear what we do not know - what is alien or different from us. In poems like Baby Born with Antlers , Dog Makes $60 Million Modelling and Duck Hunters Shoot Angel , Leax grapples with this conflict between desire and fear humorously, chillingly, poignantly and artfully. If you have ever been attracted - or repelled - by a tabloid news headline, these poems are for you.