Happy New Year! This selection, chosen by guest editor Valyntina Grenier, is from A Registry of Survival by Ann Tweedy, released by Last Word Press in 2020.
Gifts My Mother Has Given Me as an Adult
Silk scarf with Monet lily pad design
Silk scarf with Audubon bird design
Slate-blue, cable-knit winter hat (one of two she was wearing on top of each other when I saw her last)
Poetry books I’d specifically asked for (but months or years after asking me what I wanted for a birthday or holiday, so that I had to restrain myself in buying once asked)
Dressy brown leather gloves
Dress shirts (e.g., lavender embossed floral silk from Talbots which my feral cat later peed on, no-iron cotton lavender and sage shirts from Orvis)
A cognitive therapy book called Learned Optimism
Amber earrings
Pink quartz and hematite bracelet
A book about how not to hyperventilate
Purple cashmere sweater (while homeless)
Ann Tweedy‘s first full-length book, The Body’s Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks, Beleaguered Oases (2nd ed. Seven Kitchens 2020), White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts 2013), and A Registry of Survival (Last Word 2020). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama, Clackamas Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review, and many other places, and she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and three Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She currently teaches at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law.
Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words. She is the author of Honeymoon Shoes and the chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart and In Our Now. You’ll find her work in, Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, Lana Turner, The Journal, Querencia, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.
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