Real Courage by Michael Meyerhofer

"They say Man's first tool was a hammer, 
which makes sense since I can't 
imagine apes working a protractor, 
much like a sextant under the wet stars."

~~Page 7, The Trouble with Hammers

Real Courage is a chapbook and the poetry in there is very very different, with many layers. At one place, it might seem very simple and next line completely surprises us. 

Ode To Dogs (Page 22)

I am tired of hearing about dogs
used as metaphors for the uncivilized.
Imagine a world in which humans

possessed at least twenty times
as many olfactory receptors, 
able to distinguish the tang of cancer

rising musk-like from the bedsheets
next to a smoldering ash tray,
able to detect that one drop of blood

in every five quarts of water,
to know what you did last night
no matter how many times 

you soap-scrubbed the evidence.
It does not take savagery
but more love than we can muster

to lick the hand you've sniffed,
to love despite the perfume of sins
we wear each day like a halo.

This well depicts who is uncivilized. 

About Michael Meyerhofer: Michael Meyerhofer's third book, Damnatio Memoriae, won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub Street Book Prize). 

He has also published five chapbooks: Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper's Husband(winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest).