From Bjarki, Not Bjarki, which was published in January by the University of Iowa Press.

What is wood? Consider the teenager’s nomenclature for an erect pecker. A peckerwood is a jerk. A woodpecker is a bird. A group of woodcocks is a fall. A flock of seagulls is annoying. Though wooden rafters support your roof, there is no wood in a rafter of turkeys. There are wood ducks, woodchucks, Wood Islands, Woodvilles, Wood Alleys, none of them as wooden as the personalities of your dead neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Wood, who are both just as stiff as a board,…