Tag: t.a. noonan

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Peggy Hamilton’s “Questions for Animals”

PeggyH

Out Fox

I saw the big fox again on the path
at twilight. To see something improbable
and wild
more than once seems like
it should be good
luck

but in China the teaching is that the fox is not.

Elder daughter, hair of copper, newly past her teens,
points out the obvious.
You are not Chinese.
(Which, I point out, she would also do if she were Chinese.
Into mid-twenties, unforeseen,
she will have an apartment in Beijing.)

Hours later
I saw four or five smaller foxes among
the children’s playground things.
The slide, the baby swings.
One may have been the shadow of another.

Because they are hunters, as I passed,
they stopped.
Tracked. What I said was run away run
away

Not because of the luck. Or hunt.
Because it’s only when you say stay
and it can’t
and it won’t
and it doesn’t
and it goes
that it is
loss.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

An Open Letter to TriQuarterly

Dear TriQuarterly:

You don’t know me. Even if I chose to sign this open letter with my real name, you wouldn’t. I’m not an A-lister; I don’t have one of those names that everyone recognizes, like Billy Collins or A.E. Stallings or James Franco.

Still, I’d like to talk to you about your letter. You know, the one that goes like this:

The editors at TriQuarterly recently sent you a notice that your submission was not accepted for publication. I want to clarify that, due to very high volume and limited publication space, our staff was unable to review your submission. Our intent was to give you the opportunity to publish elsewhere, though I realize that our original email was not as clear as I had hoped. I apologize if this has caused any confusion.

At the risk of sounding dense, I am confused. Your letter invites more questions than it answers, and I’d like to pose some of them now:

  1. How can a magazine with, as stated on your website, nineteen people on the masthead be incapable of handling its submission load?
  2. Related, most magazines that are overwhelmed simply close submissions. Why didn’t you do that?
  3. Should your letter be read as a poorly phrased euphemism for Just so you’re aware, we saw your name on your cover letter, didn’t recognize it, and decided to reject outright? If so, why even allow unsolicited submissions?
  4. A few individuals have defended TriQuarterly‘s decision to reject work unread to “give [the submitter] the opportunity to publish elsewhere.” Yet you accept simultaneous submissions. In what universe does it make sense for a magazine to reject submissions unread when those works can be sent to other markets?
  5. There is some scuttlebutt on social media that this maneuver was the work of a lone gunman rogue editor. If this is true, how could a single editor do this without any oversight? If it’s not, should we trust a magazine that would scapegoat someone in this fashion?
  6. For that matter, why would any magazine, especially one with TriQuarterly‘s reputation, think this letter was a good idea? (I’m reminded of Chris Rock’s proclamation to Jerry Lewis in Bigger and Blacker: “Lie to me!”)

I suspect that you will, in time, address some (if not all) of these questions. Perhaps they will even be satisfactory to some writers out there. Rest assured, though, that I won’t be one of them. No matter how well crafted your damage control is, I will refuse to submit to you again.

I won’t be alone.

Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be writing, submitting, and publishing. You know, doing the work that will make my name so well known, you’ll be there to accept my work without reading it.

Sincerely,
One Nameless Writer

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Peggy Hamilton’s “Questions for Animals”

PeggyH

To Feed a Girl

Put her with many girls do not let them
speak sleep them over chickens drop nets low
her to hands knees to come go sit shadow
in doorways open breathing men who can
sleep their clothes gone over by someone then
returned hands knead sleep on a restless skin
back to doorway seeds in daylight go to
pots of water what to the eye looked like
buttons between fingers pushed back almond
like his eyes attached once one broke she gave
me half teeth to task unsewing blinding
white shirt we buried it eyes lowering
whenever he passed he never missed it
none safe little lashes he had others

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Peggy Hamilton’s “Questions for Animals”

PeggyH

Here

I. Where is the field

that is wet from the rain that must run from us or be made steam
because what we are doing is our shelter and we may not stop, not
yet, not while there is breath, not while there is hunger, not now, not from this?

Where is the field that we have turned and turned again taken out of
eaten from put our backs into, sweat into, blood yes
and tears when each thought the other wasn’t looking?

Where is the place

before it was the field, of grass like knives and rock and flash
flood and the rut and harden our moving made?

Did you ever guess each time you apologized for not having made it to water
before dark, I smiled no matter, but never told you why:
I could scour the dishes with salt or sand, night falling overhead,
quarter-hour by quarter-hour, and watch you tie down the animals, the tent,
and bring the old skin off my hands.

Poor stars,
younger and more and closer then,
could only crowd the sky with wanting you and watch.
We, pounding bones on bones on ground: you said here
is the difference
between the force that makes dust
and the force that makes coal
between the force that makes coal and
the force that makes
diamonds you told me here
you showed me
here
and every morning the children’s eyes glittered like yours where are
they now.

II. What if what we know is wrong?

Look what made us. Our lives. Look what we can do: we can take one more step
and then the next for miles through fires of burning lungs and muscles. We can hold
our breath and lift what we cannot lift. Then carry it at a dead run. Into the ocean
and swim. Take it over walls into crawl spaces and then the coup. We can throw it
not away but high when our hands are needed for the next thing because up

it’s hidden. Nobody expects it there. Nobody ever thinks to look. Especially when
we are standing still. With all the promise of a spring. Maintaining an unwavering
look knowing that

even in its ascent, from the moment of release, the heavy thing is speeding back.
The force of an entire cosmos conspiring for the crash. But it can’t have that: we can
also catch.

This is the one condition, the trick. To catch it unsuspected, unseen, you must
mimic the motion of the thing. Drop. Appear to fall. Prostrate. Then up onto
your knees. What they see you catch is their gaze on the curve of your back, your
thigh. They struggle to regain your unblinking eye. That seems like it has been
there, on their indiscretion, all the time. You have taught them to mistrust their
own intentions. This is the origin of prayer. This is the power of kneeling: simple

leverage.

Stand. No hands. Faster or slower than they thought possible. They gasp.
Motionless one moment longer is your face. Then it smiles. They feel grateful to
have been spared. Which means mortal in your presence ever after. This is the
power of what is known as

grace.

Story is sly.
Niobe, catastrophe’s open womb, denied the grave, rest, dust, dilution. Cast to be
the monument of her loss, never once to stretch or bend or again have bones and
aching that would ease in time’s bed. Seed unsown, she becomes immortal stone
instead. What

punishment

to the wife of the man whose music beguiled rocks into walls. Did Zeus not know
Amphion could touch her still? The storyteller did. What

punishment. Or consolation. The story becomes ever slier. And it is not just stones
that weep and love the lyre.

III. What is there such a thing as?

Our fathers, specks on decks on boats on oceans
may very well have taken their bearings by the lights of stars
that were no longer there even then. There are more now. Distance makes its
contribution.

And the horizon
an illusory meeting. Real enough to steady your stomach. Neither true nor false.
You do not have to know it is optics. You do not have to believe.
We can do

this.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Peggy Hamilton’s “Questions for Animals”

PeggyH

Lang (Wolf)

You were the only one who never gave
me a thought never put a word in my
mouth the last silver linings hide great clouds
of you I saw you were like a sheet of
rain the blank look you had the nothing you
said made not a wall you always left space
enough to let the light in let the light
in between the bars when the door is gone
the nature of the beast circles around
and walks right in the cage this your best kept
this your no good reason you can’t undo
this thing you never did you can’t let go
of what you forgot where you hid buried
kill keeps itself how you loved then to dig

Lang is a homophone for a word by which a wife may address her husband as a term of endearment. It is the title of an official something like a constable.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Peggy Hamilton’s “Questions for Animals”

PeggyH

Nu Er (Girl)

You never told me what you wanted I
had faith whatever it was I was strong
enough to take anything that caught your
eye I went back made it mine little things
I took were enough to get you close when
you got inside it was you I stole you
opened up your eyes and caught me in the
act my hands around the throat of what I
love most that look on your face when you’re gone
now you’re gone I never said it doesn’t
hurt after all they’re voodoo dolls but I
feel you and they don’t their eyes are painted
open they can’t see you at all they look
in your face and never know you are gone

Five stages of femaleness:
at 10, a girl; at 20, a woman; at 30, a wolf; at 40, a tiger; 50 and beyond, a dragon

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Becca Barniskis’ “Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket”

Image

From “Act III”

The stage shrinks down to a slender column of light.

Xavier Box

[walking around a cabinet lit from within and
stopping to peer inside from time to time, his
breath creating small clouds on the glass]
Dead cicada. Dried pod.
Greasy feather and what seems like a working compass.
Miniature furniture. Nonfunctioning radio.
A row of bones hanging on a string.
Must be all those soldiers
she killed.

Now I sleep standing up, marry
the light to memory
so that I may recall exactly
the correct sequence of events:

One I whistled. Two she returned.
Three I attacked the guard. Four I rattled at her cage.
Five we fled. Six we knocked out a soldier
standing by the entrance.
Seven is the steps leading down
and eight the rasp
of the heavy door opening to the outside
courtyard. Nine the horse.
Ten the ridge at night—
eleven her breath hot at the back of my neck
and the cold metal of the gun
she lifted coolly from the guard’s holster
as we ran by his slumped form.
Twelve is here, [tapping]
this glass.

—

This selection comes from Becca Barniskis chapbook Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here!

Becca Barniskis’ chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket is just out (2014) from Anomalous Press and is available also as a musical collaboration with Nick Jaffe in both vinyl and digital formats. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals, among them Handsome, The Boiler, Mid-American Review, burntdistrict, Conduit, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird and the Northwest Review. She teaches poetry and she works as a freelance writer and consultant in arts education for a range of schools, arts organizations and public agencies across the upper Midwest and around the US. Along with her co-authors Nick Jaffe and Barbara Hackett Cox she wrote the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Becca is an associate editor at the Teaching Artist Journal. She also helped launch and develop Artist to Artist, a growing network of artists and educators who meet regularly to develop and share their teaching practice.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Becca Barniskis’ “Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket”

Image

From “Act II”

X

[banging the wall in a pattern]
I hope she knows how to listen.
We must leave tonight.
In my mind I can feel the way
her hand encircled my wrist
momentarily.
A stronger grip than I expected
given her small frame.
With flames in it.

M

[head cocked to side]
Tonight then. I will be ready.

[Fade.]

—

This selection comes from Becca Barniskis chapbook Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here!

Becca Barniskis’ chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket is just out (2014) from Anomalous Press and is available also as a musical collaboration with Nick Jaffe in both vinyl and digital formats. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals, among them Handsome, The Boiler, Mid-American Review, burntdistrict, Conduit, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird and the Northwest Review. She teaches poetry and she works as a freelance writer and consultant in arts education for a range of schools, arts organizations and public agencies across the upper Midwest and around the US. Along with her co-authors Nick Jaffe and Barbara Hackett Cox she wrote the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Becca is an associate editor at the Teaching Artist Journal. She also helped launch and develop Artist to Artist, a growing network of artists and educators who meet regularly to develop and share their teaching practice.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Becca Barniskis’ “Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket”

Image

From “Act II”

X

I bet she is eloquizing.
She has a way
of doing that:
charming,
heedless,
a racketeer
who extorts
meaning out of teacups.

M

I suppose he thinks that this is my fault.
Who could’ve known the explosion
would be so extravagant?
So…visible?
All my operations
heretofore have been more
disciplined.
Of course,
I never have been
seized that way: all my explosives
set off at once.

—

This selection comes from Becca Barniskis chapbook Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here!

Becca Barniskis’ chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket is just out (2014) from Anomalous Press and is available also as a musical collaboration with Nick Jaffe in both vinyl and digital formats. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals, among them Handsome, The Boiler, Mid-American Review, burntdistrict, Conduit, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird and the Northwest Review. She teaches poetry and she works as a freelance writer and consultant in arts education for a range of schools, arts organizations and public agencies across the upper Midwest and around the US. Along with her co-authors Nick Jaffe and Barbara Hackett Cox she wrote the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Becca is an associate editor at the Teaching Artist Journal. She also helped launch and develop Artist to Artist, a growing network of artists and educators who meet regularly to develop and share their teaching practice.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed – Becca Barniskis’ “Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket”

from “Act I”

My Name Is Xavier Box

I am unusually clever for my size
and shape. I turn on a pistol,
sleep cold leaded most nights.
I enter head first the dim hall,
look for letters left lying
about—unsent or incognito.
I have been sent to investigate
an almost secret war.
Its casualties are ashamed
and hide their injuries.
Their communiqués are in code.
I listen outside. And devise
my plans accordingly.
My Name Is Mimi Sprig

I have whole boxes of soldier
that I light on fire
to read by.
Those small heads burn
for some time.
‘I eat my enemies! I drink my foes!’
I would tell anyone who listened
(usually at breakfast).
But no one is left to hear.

Today I will sweep out all the rooms
and polish the empty tins
and clever plaster foodstuffs
arrayed so carefully in the pantry.
Then I will roll bandages.

 

—

This selection is from Becca Barniskis’ chapbook Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here!

Becca Barniskis’ chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket is just out (2014) from Anomalous Press and is available also as a musical collaboration with Nick Jaffe in both vinyl and digital formats. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from numerous journals, among them Handsome, The Boiler, Mid-American Review, burntdistrict, Conduit, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird and the Northwest Review. She teaches poetry and she works as a freelance writer and consultant in arts education for a range of schools, arts organizations and public agencies across the upper Midwest and around the US. Along with her co-authors Nick Jaffe and Barbara Hackett Cox she wrote the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Becca is an associate editor at the Teaching Artist Journal. She also helped launch and develop Artist to Artist, a growing network of artists and educators who meet regularly to develop and share their teaching practice.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.