Between the Sea and Home

In the second poem of this debut collection, starved cats howling outside a window are ``sometimes confused with the / cry of a baby or a / wild thing dying''--an appropriate introduction to the animal instincts battling with human nature in the poems that follow. Unmistakably feminist, many poems are in the voices of teenagers raped by their fathers and boyfriends. A long poem is addressed to Delmira Agustini, a Uruguayan poet ``murdered by her husband whom she left after twenty-six days of marriage.'' But this damage done to other women has its personal counterpart, as the speaker figuratively moves rocks aside to dig up her mother's body: ``rocks heavier than / your two babies / dead after birth / heavy as the doctor / who would not cut / who said do it alone / you'll feel more like a woman.'' A 13-page monologue in the voice of a bag lady expertly renders a seemingly irrational range of emotions: after a calm beginning, the speaker becomes increasingly agitated as the woman she's addressing runs off down the street. Though they vary in length, all of David's convincing poems are remarkably uniform in line and stanza structure; but form is not the issue here, content is. (July)