This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from Auguries & Divinationsby Heather Treseler (Bauhan Publishing 2024).
Egyptian Wing
Lost, in the museum, on Saturdays in the wine-dark rooms of Egyptian tombs because my mother had a disorder of the blood and no one would tell me anything I could believe of death—
her bed raised high as an ancient altar of stone worn by a priest’s blade. There, she lay cordoned off, beyond touch, like a carved artifact the centuries have filigreed with hairline
fissures of light. I was told to pray to the poor man who hung, lashed to his lumber, his ribs a staircase to a face of agony strangely cleansed of terror: this was no god to save a mother—
whereas the Egyptians had followed a creed of birds. Even the tomb was called an egg. And while “mummy” an accident of sound, not sense, there was tender swaddling
in death clothes, each body bathed in Nile salt and stuffed with fragrant spices, organs parsed in Canopic jars like the grammar—subject, predicate— of a sentence. To be sent
off, as if to summer camp, with pets, snacks, and details for care and handling: for that afterlife, I prayed to falcon-headed Horus and the winged soul
of the heart. Weren’t birds commuting between a bitter earth and sky? Making an eros of pitched precision? Mothering a small body toward its horizon.
Heather Treseler is the author of Auguries & Divinations (April 2024), which received the May Sarton Prize, and Parturition, which received the Munster Literature Centre’s international chapbook prize. Her poems appear in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and The American Scholar, and have received Narrative magazine’s annual poetry prize and the W. B. Yeats Prize. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and a professor of English at Worcester State University.
Joey Gould, who is Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent>Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & Persephone’s Fruit. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from Auguries & Divinationsby Heather Treseler (Bauhan Publishing 2024).
Purpura
When the poet wrote I lost my mother’s watch, we knew she meant more than a timepiece.
To watch over the soft-skulled expulsive being that is baby is a genre of love that must break
its own clock. In my first years, I slept little. When I slept, I left my eyes’ garage doors open.
Poor mother thought baby awake, mother awake. For months: staring contests in the half-dark,
calling each other’s bluff, falling in love as any pair must—with desire and jealousy. Jostling
furniture in the psyche, heady hormonal rush. When I lost my mother’s watch, I was thirteen.
The day, unaccountably bright. Fields of flora bloomed under her skin as if she were a lavender
hat in Seurat’s famed painting. An ambulance rolled its orange glass eye at her strange beauty.
For weeks, we waited for her body to lose its artistic ambition. (Toxic drugs, confusion.)
Doctors asked: Who is President? What year is it? Can you name your children? Purpura, the broken
blood vessels in her skin’s pointillist painting. Some code or augury to read and remember.
I watched, thinking of Phoenicians finding the world’s costliest color in the crushed bodies
of murex: vats of pulverized mollusks to trim the general’s cloak, dye an emperor’s robe purple.
What a tyrant or daughter claims as her right, calling it nature. The first empire is mother.
Heather Treseler is the author of Auguries & Divinations (April 2024), which received the May Sarton Prize, and Parturition, which received the Munster Literature Centre’s international chapbook prize. Her poems appear in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, and The American Scholar, and have received Narrative magazine’s annual poetry prize and the W. B. Yeats Prize. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and a professor of English at Worcester State University.
Joey Gould, who is Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent>Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & Persephone’s Fruit. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the March installment of our reading series, poets Joey Gould and Lenna Mendoza. Join us on Thursday, March 21st at South Press Coffee from 6:00-8:00 PM for a reading followed by an open mic hosted by Shlagha Borah. Sign-up for the open mic begins at 6 PM sharp and is limited to 10-12 readers.
Joey Gould, whose poetry explores faith, grief, longing, birds, & human connection, is SAFTA Spring ’24 Writer in Residence. They wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent > Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & beestung. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys. They have aided in the planning & execution of both the Massachusetts & New York City Poetry Festivals, while also performing as Izzy Hexxam in the Boston cast of Poetry Society of New York’s Poetry Brothel. Joey writes on location at cool-sounding places like Skunk’s Misery, Mount Desert, and Half Moon Beach.
Lenna Mendoza is a poet from Texas. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Salamander, Four Way Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi.
While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.
Each month we split donations with our community partner. Our community partner for March is Mountain Brigade Access. Mountain Access Brigade is a volunteer-run organization that provides secure and stigma-free support, education, and advocacy for individuals seeking abortion care in Tennessee. Currently, Mountain Access Brigade is fundraising for abortion access in Tennessee. To support their campaign, visit here!
In My Dear Yeast (Milk & Cake Press, 2024), Melanie Hyo-In Han masterfully guides readers far and wide, entering diverse terrains of both landscape and interiority. Han employs a variety of forms to her advantage as well, demonstrating a knowledge of poetics and a courage to approach reality from unexpected, and sometimes challenging, angles. With memory as her painter’s palette and words as her paintbrush, Han shares remarkable and moving truths throughout her debut full length collection.
Home is a central theme throughout My Dear Yeast, grounding Han’s speaker during difficult times. As a Third Culture Kid (TCK), Han can self-identify through multiple geographies. “Waiting for Water in Morogoro,” for example, exhibits incredible detail on daily life in Tanzania. Han invites readers to smell the spices of a mother’s sukuma wiki and feel her speaker’s “red-dirt heels / that have cracked / like the ground” (Han 3). Such sensory descriptions demonstrate how significant a role the body plays with memory and creating an idea of home, whether that home is remembered in a positive, negative, or more nuanced light.
Later in the collection, Han brings readers to Seoul. The poem “Stacked Memories” starts off right away with images of
“Hustle and bustle of lunchtime at Gwangjang Market. Fried chicken feet splayed out,
curled at the ends, rows of hanging chilis in different shades of summer sunset, dried
whole squids piled flat on top of one another, every tentacle preserved and intact.” (Han 23)
The specificity hereis both honest and stunning. Han’s attentiveness and precision across diverse landscapes is unique in the contemporary literary landscape, where so many writers feel pressure to hone in on one singular theme, identity-marker, or experience in order to find depth. Han, on the other hand, achieves both quality and quantity with care and skill.
Some of the maps Han uses to interrogate and explore are linguistic in nature. “Abecedarian in 한글 (Hangul)” puts a clever spin on a form popular in the English language. Instead of each line starting with the letters of the English alphabet in order, Han uses the fourteen consonants of the Korean alphabet. Even more inventive, and since the majority of the poem is in English, individual words are written using both alphabets together. For example, lines start with “ㄴineteen-nineteen” and “ㅅurvival” (Han 36). The hybridity of language employed throughout My Dear Yeast is delightful to explore; they additionally speak to Han’s successes as a translator. Whether readers know Han’s languages or not, the poems ring authentic and powerful.
And yet, home is always a question; at times, what constitutes home for Han is up for interpretation. Other times, when it’s in her grasp, it can later devolve or vanish. “Holding On,” at the heart of the collection, uses a consistent and neat form to allow the speaker access to traumatic memories. Each stanza, placed at a distance from one other, starts very plainly: “in the house at” followed by latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates (Han 20-21). The curious reader like me will pause to look up where these homes are located, to see how they too are scattered across the globe. Because of the emotional intensity of “Holding On,” Han uses an entirely lowercase lettering. She shares what she didn’t know, what she never realized, and what she had to do to survive. The quieter, more intimate tone demonstrates the trust Han is putting in the readers hands, as if she were revealing secrets to an old friend.
The collection ends with “Tell me 사랑해,” a poem that directly acknowledges the speaker’s desire. She craves connection, and despite having lived all over the world, she’s found it, often. But family, even when close, can feel far away. Almost entirely in the voice of the speaker’s grandmother, italicized lines signal all the ways a matriarch expresses love without saying so explicitly:
“Have you eaten? I’ll make you순두부 next time you come home.
Make sure you pay your 집세 on time.
You should read this article about happiness. You’ve been looking우울해 lately.
Do you have enough warm clothes? Why do you never wear enough layers?” (Han 42).
The list goes on, and the poem lands with the speaker replying back, or perhaps more accurately, confessing her desire to the reader:
“It was her way of letting me know
that she cared, but all I
ever wanted was to hear “사랑해.” (Han 42)
This final admittance is an act of vulnerability and bravery earned through the pages of My Dear Yeast that precede it. Through poetic excellence and the excavation of her own memories, she speaks plainly here. The last line is the culmination of all Han’s experiences, emotions, and homes. Hearing “사랑해” (I love you), Han asserts, is home.
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review’s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.
Jennifer Funk’s poetry collection, Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy (Bull City Press, 2023) is a hypnotic journey through daydreams with undertones that reflect the fear and courage it takes to hope for more. From the glorious to the spiteful, the wistful to the contemplative, each poem is a compelling fantasy and a sincere exploration of wishes that linger in the recesses of our mind. Funk invites readers to dream along, to consider their wildest fantasies alongside their sincerest wishes as she touches on themes of self-love, self-doubt, and the complex emotions associated with yearning for something while grappling with the reluctance to admit those desires, nor truly wanting to see them through.
Funk’s tone throughout the collection is strikingly authentic. There is originality to the words she writes, yet they are still somehow familiar as she captures the wondrous nature of fantasy. In “Lady Brett Ashley,” Funk writes, “It seems impossible / for a woman to live without / a little fiction” (34), which seems to be the perfect explanation for the impossible familiarity a reader feels towards the fantasies of others.
Funk begins with “Make Me Familiar,” its story transporting readers to the hues of August. This establishes the general hazy, wistful aesthetic that resonates with the thoughts that come when staring out a window on a warm day. Funk writes, “I can find myself, creature of terminal haste, creature / ever mid-stride, reconsidering the world in the middle of the road” (4). Her style weaves together reflection and reverie as her speaker embarks on fantasy.
“Origin Story: 1” establishes the necessity of daydreams—their roots and desires that elude reality. Funk writes, “I am from the hot feelings / my mother suggested might ruin me the way / they ruined her, so I kept a meticulous record / of the fires I started” (Funk 12). This disclosure is central to the collection’s embrace of reverie, and the symbol of fire returns in the end of the collection with new meaning– a symbol of destruction turned into one of rebirth.
The range of fantasies displayed throughout this collection is outstanding. In “I Run Down All Roads,” Funk writes a testament to the fragility of romantic hopes. She captures the illusions that lead nowhere, the bitterness of unmet expectation:
“I go into every maybe this time already ahead
of the story, which is real, or not real, is real as the fog now
blurring the view ahead…
I run down the future, I am so so fast,
I chase down would you want to, I pant, I pant, I cannot be caught, I am not
being chased, it will never be as good as this. Silence. Eating alone.” (Funk 19)
Funk encapsualtes the dichotomy of yearning for an idealized love and the reality that follows. The acknowledgement that “it will never be as good as this” highlights the way reality cannot satiate a preference for what is fantastical. “Silence. Eating alone” paints a poignant picture of the solitude in the aftermath of unfulfilled wishes. Funk gives way to quiet, solitary reality.
The slightly sinister quality in these intense imaginations lies in the recognition of the darker side of daydreams. Funk’s awareness makes for a complex and multi-dimensional narrative. She doesn’t shy away from the matter of self-deception and emotional tolls.
Funk begins to close the circle of fantasy with “Consent,” navigating the societal expectations that often shroud our imagination. She writes,
“But I could be
caught, I could be lightning
Directed, flash inanimate. Out beyond
These walls…
I want to say
I never assented to any role I was not fully certain I could sell
but I, too, am susceptible to the suspicion I should be
dumb and grateful, like a cow or a potted plant.” (Funk 15)
The candid admission to the conflict between autonomy and conformity is a strong reflection on the external pressures that rouse one from a daydream, the consideration that it is selfish to wish for more, but impossible not to.
In “Who Can Say,” Funk writes, “This tight circle of my life. I have been intent to wish for less,/ and what has this restraint cost, what has been left uncalled for” (40). She still asks the reader if the cost of hoping in vain is greater than the cost of hoping for less altogether.
Fantasy of Loving the Fantasy is a fantastic collection that captures the essence of wanting and waiting. Funk’s ability to articulate the little things we all have dreamt about makes this collection a must-read for anyone looking to understand the landscape of their desires.
Caitlin Mulqueen is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in English and Journalism. She loves reading, playing piano, watching sports, and the Oxford comma. She has worked as an Editorial Graphics Production intern at ESPN, is a copy editor at The Daily Beacon, a student writer for Tennessee Athletics, a graphics and video operator for the SEC Network, and a marketing/social media intern for the Knoxville Ice Bears. With the majority of her undergraduate work being in sports media, literary media has remained her sincerest passion, finding stories that come out of sports to be as moving as those from literature.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Emory Dinsmore. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, March 17th from 2 to 4PM EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Emory Night is a queer author from East Tennessee. They are currently a Senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and are working on getting their bachelor’s in creative writing. They have worked as an intern for both Sundress Publications and SAFTA. They have been published in The Phoenix, a literary magazine at the University of Tennessee. During their free time, you’ll find them hanging out with their cats, playing Dungeons and Dragons, or playing video games.
Each month we split donations with our community partner. Our community partner for March is Mountain Brigade Access. Mountain Access Brigade is a volunteer-run organization that provides secure and stigma-free support, education, and advocacy for individuals seeking abortion care in Tennessee. Currently, Mountain Access Brigade is fundraising for abortion access in Tennessee. To support their campaign, visit here!
Knoxville, TN— The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Strange Ways the World Might Be,” a workshop led by Becca Hannigan on March 13th, 2024, from 6:00-7:30PM ET. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
You’ve likely heard of magical realism, but what about realism that’s simply strange? In this workshop, we will consider how fiction and nonfiction can—quite simply—“describe strange ways the world might be,” as one critic defines fiction by Samanta Schweblin. One way to do this—which we will practice—is to strip objects and social norms from their context, to examine and experience them phenomenally.
Together, will question assumptions and unpack cultural baggage, using “widowed images” and surprising narratives. Along with Schweblin, we will draw inspiration from such writers as Franz Kafka, Lesley Nnekah Arimah, and Martha Gelhorn, looking at the history of absurdism (with nihilistic roots) and the contemporary absurd, which (I argue) is the opposite of nihilistic. The class will be generative, with ample writing prompts, discussion, and time to share. Together, we will blur genres, producing and admiring prose that you might call surrealism, absurdism, or just plain weird.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Becca Hannigan via Venmo @beccahannigan.
Becca Hannigan is a fiction writer based in Denver, Colorado. They earned a BA in environmental science at Sewanee, the University of the South. In May 2023, they graduated with an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where they taught undergraduate students and worked as fiction editor for Ecotone. Along with teaching, she has led workshops in various settings, as an intern for the Brink Literacy Project and staff at the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference. Her work has been published in Story Quarterly, the Rumpus, 303 Magazine, Juked, and elsewhere.
“Torn” at the root of them, like your life last year. We play the radio, we gather in the tub, a six-pack of Coke under the sink.
Always, one of us would be truly nervous. No one born here is afraid. We all have stories, children fished out of shattered remnants of houses, clothes spotless, white gold hair unmussed, shining like a lost coin in the dirt.
The best stories happen to other people. The local news reported a man crushed in his own house, a truck through the roof, risen by the simple air, that we take in our lungs, without thinking or waking.
The steel, tire, heft. What would never lift in any other weather.
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike(Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
The door to the porch hangs open in this weather, inviting our children and resident carpenter bees to drift lazily in and out. A trail of cut crabgrass
chicken-scratched across the floor from bare feet running to the sink— because they need water for their own complicated structures. Today,
digging for worms, pulled writhing from the dirt. They chase each other with them, threaten to add a slimy tress to sister’s hair, toothless Medusa.
At last, we have all been told to stay home. Everyone begins to trust garden dirt on their hands, to fear another’s touch, another’s breath.
I can tell you, they trust too much. In our house in Arkansas, Black Widow spiders webbed the corners of each window and door frame, every exit wreathed
with poison. The coyotes, laughing like children, ate our housecats when they slipped out the door. It’s easy to believe people are the hazards,
that God’s good earth can only give us safe things. Indifferent, the soil flakes on the hands of the playing child, flakes on the hands of the dead.
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike(Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
You confront me, rising arrogantly at the first of March alongside every path and in and out of gardens. Tufts of green threatening flower, I have nothing new to tell you. Never once did I set a bulb going, pocketed in the earth. I have waited an entire winter to only know more winter. Yellow lanterns, clusters of bright faces, fist-clenched constellations, I’ll see you dusted with snow I’m sure next Thursday. I’ll see you bow your heads in despair as I’ve bowed mine to pray for life to spring up once more from the lonely dirt.
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike(Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
