This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Elizabeth Vignali, is from Larariumby Ray Ball, released by Variant Lit in 2020.
The Color of Fangs
I know how to hold fast to the memory of a snake winding around my arm. Silkier than a blood pressure pump, as it squeezes. How to stand stock still as a rattler slithers over my boot and off into the scrub.
But I do not know how to suck the rancor from the sweet nor how to spit the venom out. How to wait winter out in some dark hole and then come home.
Ray Ball currently lives on the land of the Dena’ina, where she works as a history professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is the author of two history books and two chapbooks of poetry, Tithe of Salt(Louisiana Literature, 2019) and Lararium (Variant Lit, 2020). Her poems and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Glass, Orange Blossom Review,Split Rock Review, and X-R-A-Y. She has received multiple nominations for Pushcart and been a Best of the Net finalist. Ray is senior editor at Coffin Belland assistant editor Juke Joint. You can find her on Twitter: @ProfessorBall.
Elizabeth Vignali is the author of the poetry collection House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021) and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in the Pacific Northwest on the land of the Noxwsʼáʔaq and Xwlemi peoples, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review.
