This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodooby Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
content warning for cancer
Simultaneous Equations
Pi is always a constant even if the circle is imagined. Elvis singing in the background as we counted her last breaths. Judy Brown at the funeral on crutches, their tips sinking in the wet grass.
Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.
In this newest installment of “We Call Upon the Author,” Hattie Jean Hayes, a writer and comedian, discusses her debut chapbook, Poems [for, about, because] My Friends. Her cheeky, witty answers expose friendship as craft, lineage, heartbreak, growth, and ultimately, an immense gift. Any writer who wants to learn how to cultivate an intimate relationship with readers should spend time with Hayes’ stunning words.
Marah Hoffman: Poetry has a long and culturally rich history as a vessel for meditations on friendship. Yet, you achieve ingenuity. Poems are displayed horizontally. Stanzas sit side by side, coalescing into a whole, rather than fracturing into parts. Why did you choose poems as gifts for your friends? What is it about the form (or more specifically your unique understanding of the form) that lends itself to intimacy?
Hattie Hayes: First, thanks for this generous and perceptive view of the formal choices in the book. Preserving the structures of the poems was vital, and I’m glad you appreciated my intentional decisions! These poems are gifts, and, like any good gift, they’re all unique to the friends they’re for, about, because. I tried to make sure the form of the poems contributed, which is why you get a squarish block of text like that on a postcard in “The Lady’s Improving,” or the dual dueling stanzas in “little twin stars,” or brief diary-style entries divorced from chronology in “The Year in Pictures.”
I’m a journalist by trade, poet by habit. I’ve written a lot of fiction. I’ve written lots and lots and lots of first-person nonfiction. Poetry allows me to write with a potency I find difficult to access elsewhere. My feelings, especially about friends and friendship, are so intense. The formal constraints of a poem allow me to explore the width and depth of a particular feeling without diluting it, or stepping on myself with justifications and explanations.
MH: What inspired you to include the squares of text dispersed throughout your collection? They contain sweet images that imbue the book with a scrapbook element and, in my view, elevate your writing to a realm outside of poetry.
HH: I’m happy you asked about these “prose interludes.” Years before I started assembling this manuscript, I wrote an eighteen-page essay with the working title “An Oral History of All My Friends.” Eventually I wrote myself into a corner, and I put the essay aside. I remembered it as I was working on this collection, and decided to salvage the parts that might illuminate the poems.
The poems capture feelings. The prose interludes capture moments. In the prose parts of this book, I wanted to trace the lineage of the emotions which drive the book as a whole.
I want to give enormous credit, and much gratitude, to Veronica Bennett at Bullshit Lit, who designed the cover. That definitely contributes to the “scrapbook” feel of this collection. When I sent her my inspiration photos, they included vintage photo albums and cookbooks. Veronica also had the idea to block off the prose into squares, which I really liked. I think it helps the prose stand apart and gives it a “confessional” quality that suits the mood of the collection.
MH: The inclusion of loved ones’ names and identifying details is of frequent debate in the literary world. What is your take?
HH: I am a poet of eager embarrassment. I love writing someone a poem and saying “Hi, I wrote you a poem,” and watching their face while they read it. I love perceiving and being perceived. I love using microscopic images as a vehicle for extrasensory perception, a sort of “Oh my God I was JUST thinking about that the other day, I can’t believe you remember it too.” I love writing something, and crying, and thinking, “I hope other people also cry when they read this,” and then feeling validated if they do. I love when someone sees me too clearly for comfort. I love when I get to remove all doubt that a poem is, in fact, a gift crafted for a specific celebration.
I also love being misunderstood. I love when my closest friends read a poem I’ve written and get it dead wrong. I love sprinkling in a little mystery, and privately rejoicing when people try too hard to understand a line that’s just a movie reference. I love to write down my side of the heartbreak, my angry and vindictive narrative, and leave the other party anonymous, giving myself both the catharsis and the control.
In some cases, to be enigmatic is to invite attention. Not throwaway attention – actual attention. A close reading. However, often, people will read your work and mistake the lack of a specified subject for ambiguity. In other cases, you can invite the same sort of attentive, meaningful reading by saying exactly who the poem is about. Darren Demaree’s “Emily poems” are a great example: there is one “main character,” one subject; she has a robust mythology.
All of this is to say: in my mind, every writer should approach every project differently. There are poems in this book that don’t have names for the protection of me, or others. And then the “name” poems are an explicit gesture of appreciation and recognition, because the people I name in my poems are all people who have loved me into a better poet.
MH: Friendships can, of course, be accompanied by heartbreak. Your tender collection does not ignore rupture. Did you think about the coexistence of hope and despair while organizing your poems? If so, how did this affect structure?
HH: When thinking about heartbreak, I have primarily considered it through the lens of friendship. No one has broken my heart like my friends have. By writing about these friendships, I understand their impact on me.
There are two modalities of organization at play in this book, and together, they create a sort of arc. There are the “character chapters,” which are small groups of poems about specific people. My friend Molly is the most obvious of these; the “Molly poems” conclude the book. There’s a section which centers on Dottie, my cat, and those poems make use of her perspective to some degree. And in the front of the book, there is a sequence of poems that use my most established friendship, with my high school best friend Cassie, as the focal point. I see these as three “cores” of my understanding of friendship. They all represent this unconditional friendship that you can come back to, life after life.
And then there are more thematic chapters. Everything from “The Year in Pictures” to “You Will Find Your People” encompasses the excitement of new friendship and freedom of familiar ones. Then, exactly halfway through the book, things shift. You’ll see that “tktktk” through “A Poem That Takes Place on September 26th” delve more into heartache, in many different shapes.
MH: Poems, For, About, Because My Friends contains a lifetime of relationships. I am curious, how long did it take you to write?
HH: The oldest poems in this collection were written in late 2015, early 2016. They didn’t have a “life” in the outside world. They weren’t published. Some lived in emails to my friend Molly Bilker, who sees most, if not all, of my poems. And other poems in this collection from that time period, I shared with the people they were about. “Marriages So Far,” the first poem in this collection, is about four different people; I think all four of them read their “section.” So that was eight years before the book came out.
The first draft of the manuscript came together during the summer of 2022. I had taken a social media hiatus for six months. The day after my social media break ended, I logged on to Twitter and saw Bullshit Lit was holding a 24-hour contest for chapbook submissions. Fortuitous! I assembled a manuscript, which included my poems and the prose interludes, and that was ultimately accepted for publication in 2023.
In the weeks before the book came out, I worked to finalize the manuscript. I rearranged the poems to fit this “arc” I had in my mind, and I added in some more. “You Will Find Your People,” “Civil Engineering” and “For a Decade” were written in early 2023. I composed those poems with the manuscript in mind. In the time since the first draft came together, I’ve been aligning my writing more intentionally with the themes of friends and friendships.
MH: Do you imagine your readers as friends?
HH: I imagine my friends as readers! I know, in theory, strangers and acquaintances are reading my poetry. But when I think about someone sitting down with my book, I always imagine the face of someone I love. My friends have been such vocal champions of my work that it is a challenge to think of anyone else reading my book. But as I say in the first prose interlude in the book, I have a very willing attachment style. Many of my friendships have grown out of quiet, mutual appreciation for each other’s writing or creative projects. And I think now, having a book out, I’m going to experience a heightened version of that phenomenon. If you’re interested in reading all my thoughts on friendship, you’re likely a qualified candidate for a position as my friend.
Hattie Jean Hayes is a writer and comedian, originally from a small town in Missouri, who now lives in New York. Her work has appeared in The Ex-Puritan, Hell Is Real, Janus Literary, HAD, and others. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her first book of poems is Poems [for, about, because] My Friends, published by Bullshit Lit. Hattie completed a SAFTA residency in September 2022 and is working on her first novel. You can find her poetry, fiction, newsletter, and other writings at hattiehayes.com.
Marah Hoffman is a poetry and creative nonfiction writer from Reading, Pennsylvania. She is an MFA candidate, graduate teaching assistant, and Ecotone reader at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In the fall of 2022, she was the long-term writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). Hoffman continues to support SAFTA as Creative Director.
This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodooby Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
content warning for cancer
Escape Artist
When I lie down and fall into half-sleep—listening for the bed alarm— I arise in her body— skin torn and bleeding— not sure how I got there.
The rails on the hospice bed can’t keep me in. I slither under, reach over, slide between the footboard and rail end.
Small, lithe, flexible— I never remember my legs won’t walk anymore until I find myself on the floor. They pat the blood away, cover the torn skin, ask questions I can’t answer.
Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.
This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodooby Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
content warning for cancer
Trop Cher
None of Mama’s clothes fit by October, so she’d had to replace her stained favorites, sacrifice comfort and habit for warmth. When I took her to chemo, she wore the size 2 jeans of her best friend’s 13-year-old granddaughter, a red fleece top, and a houndstooth jacket from Goodwill with a black turban. I admired the stylish figure she cut, vaguely French, her legs so thin she actually looked tall at 5’2”. For the first time, she looked like her mother, a fierce beauty who threw back her head in photos and rocked a blonde wig after chemo—light and brassy above her olive skin and black eyes.
We stopped at Publix—she’d never been— and the nausea was still hours away though she was too weak to walk the long aisles. I cajoled her into a motorized cart with touchy brakes, her oxygen tank in the basket in front. Scoffing at the prices, the gourmet food I’d hoped would tempt her, she careened through the aisles, endangering toes, picked out birthday cards for the grandchildren—still in the bag, unsigned, on her dresser among all the meds, other illness paraphernalia, her little treasures, now a part of the preserved moment months later when she was gone—opening and closing like a telescope, occluding the time before and the time after.
Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is now accepting applications for short-term writing residencies in all genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, screenwriting, journalism, academic writing, and more—for their summer residency period which runs from May 20th, 2024 to August 18th, 2024. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to complete their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.
Each farmhouse residency costs $300/week, which includes a room of one’s own, as well as access to our communal kitchen, bathroom, office, and living space, plus wireless internet. Residencies in the Writers Coop are $150/week and include your own private dry cabin as well as access to the farmhouse amenities. Because of the low cost, we are rarely able to offer scholarships for Writers Coop residents.
Residents will stay at the SAFTA farmhouse, located on a working farm on a 45-acre wooded plot in a Tennessee “holler” perfect for hiking, birdwatching, and foraging. The farmhouse is also just 20 minutes from downtown Knoxville, an exciting and creative city that is home to a thriving arts community. SAFTA is ideal for writers looking for a rural retreat with urban amenities.
As part of our commitment to anti-racist work, we use a reparations payment model for our farmhouse residencies which consists of the following:
3 reparations weeks of equally divided payments for Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers at $150/week
3 discounted weeks of equally divided payments for writers of color at $250/week
6 equitable weeks of equally divided payments at $300/week
Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers are also invited to apply for a $350 support grant to help cover the costs of food, travel, childcare, and/or any other needs while they are at the residency. Currently, we are able to offer two of these grants per residency period (spring/summer/fall). If you would like to donate to expand this funding, you may do so here.
For the 2024 summer residency period, SAFTA will offer the following fellowships:
Palestinian Writers: one full fellowship for a Palestinian writer or writer of Palestinian descent
Black & Indigenous Writers Fellowship: one full fellowship for Black and/or Indigenous identifying writers
Writers of Color Fellowships: one full and one 50% fellowship for writers of color
Creekmore Bespoke Fellowship for Women 50+: one full fellowship for a woman writer who is 50 or older
The application deadline for the summer residency period is February 15, 2024. Find out more about the application process at www.sundressacademyforthearts.com.
The application fee is waived for all BIPOC identifying writers. For all fellowship applications, the application fee will also be waived for those who demonstrate financial need; please state this in your application under the financial need section.
Reading was always as much of a polite way to be alone with myself as it was one of my favorite ways to connect with other people. As a kid, I used to be able to effortlessly produce excitement about reading to the point that I didn’t need a story. My Nana was deaf, and she and I would bond over her science books. I would flip through encyclopedias for hours and create my own stories in my head about the different animals or environments. When I started reading chapter books, I used to be able to consume hundreds of pages of fantasy and sci-fi in only a few days’ time. I would get lost in the oceans-deep worlds of Eragon or entries in the Halo extended universe. I loved how easily I could escape into a sleepy mountain village or an alien spaceship harnessing the energy of a star.
It wasn’t until my teen years that reading started getting difficult for me. There was pressure to move toward other hobbies. In high school, I loved all of the required readings—even when most everyone else loathed them. I remember how much The Great Gatsby floored me when I first read it. My first taste of literature felt like I was being inducted into adulthood, and I couldn’t wait. Even in high school, though, I always felt like the best reading was being withheld from me. I was so excited to go to college because of the access to books from all over the world. I went all-in on loving literature, and I forgot about the reading I used to do. In college, the pressure to conform stuck around, but instead of loathing all books, I felt like I was expected to compete with my peers in reading the most elevated text. I loved how important and powerful writers like Toni Morrison, Anton Chekhov, and Julia Alvarez felt to read that enjoyment fell on the backburner. I harbored such an elitist attitude that I felt like I was excluding people from reading rather than sharing reading with others.
It’s only recently that I’ve started to read again. My partner has been stressing that I need to rediscover what I loved about books and find a balance. Lately, I’ve been reading K.W. Jeter’s Star Wars books about Boba Fett and some short stories from a Jorge Luis Borges anthology. I’ve also started to read comics—books like Art Spiegelman’s Maus opened me up to how effective comics can be in blending a good story with communicative visuals. Nowadays, I most often admire when genre fiction and literature blend because they appeal to each others’ weaknesses. My favorite book is a hard question, but some books that I’ve been mulling over a lot lately are John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada.
Kyle J. Wente (he/him) graduated from the University of Tennessee, where he studied English and Creative Writing. He has served as Editor of Poetry for Sequoya Review in Chattanooga, TN. He loves nature, playing bass, and co-parenting his partner’s ten-year-old beagle, Marlowe Eugene.
Nnadi Samuel, the author of the newly released chapbook Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade, sat down with Sundress editorial intern Heather Domenicis to discuss themes such as violence, liberty, and individuality within the pages of Samuel’s book.
Heather Domenicis: Can you speak to the recurring use of militant language and imagery in this collection?
Nnadi Samuel: The collection itself speaks to a time of restraints, bondage, and gag order—achieved mostly through militancy. When the reader finds these reoccurring themes, it is more of a natural happening than a premeditated motif. The poem a “Glossary of Artilleryn Terms” is an example. As suggested by the title, we’ve survived such a barrage of hostile treatment that we coin new names for it. One line in particular attests to this: “To cherish where I’m from is to add guns to our part of speech.” It becomes part and parcel of our life’s syllabus; to attempt to purge it from our literature is to live in denial. A line from another poem from the manuscript states, “an editor tells me to tone down on grief, each time I begin a poem without birds. I would have him know, I lack the patience for soft feathered imagery, because we were raised to outpace bullets.” The conversation that birthed these lines did in fact happen and my response was the same. All this is to say we cannot shy away or turn a blind eye forever to the war which breathes fire daily in our faces—both at home and on sovereign soil.
HD: The titles of the poems heavily bleed into the poems themselves or assign context to the text, especially in “Praise for the Inner Lining of my Morphing Apparel” and “There is a Gnawing Need for Sugar.” How and when do you generate titles?
NS: Yes! I love the spillover blessing that comes with the scenery in poems like these. Sometimes, it is what gives rise to the poem. Other times, it is the nucleus/core around which the poem revolves. Either way, the titles of my poems have always been directly connected to the actual poems, so much so that you can substitute one for the other and still not lose out totally in its meaning and all that it has to say. In writing a poem, the titling starts almost immediately as the writing. Often, it happens right in the middle of it, and I am struck by one bright sentence which sums up the whole experience.
HD: Regarding “Praise for the Inner Lining of my Morphing Apparel,” can you elaborate on the significance of the “exit dress” and its role in the narrative?
NS: In most African countries, mode of dressing has been and still is one subtle way to profile and enslave individuals against their wish. This unfortunately has also slipped into the religious sectors, which are meant to be the soul of humanity. For example, in the line “I: asphalt glory. Color riot, in ways that put coffins out of fashion,” I am thinking of the numerous victims that tried to be different but ended up in a body bag (coffin)—perhaps, more beautiful and appreciated only in death. The one way to exercise freedom here is through rebellion, cut from same fabric as the dress: regaling oneself unabashedly in whatever manner one feels the most comfortable in. In between the inner lining of this dress is where they find closure, where they feel seen and heard. It is their long-sought door to liberty.
HD: Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade reflects on personal traumas as well as a broader, collective trauma. How do you navigate this intersection in your poetry?
NS: I started out wanting only to account for personal and remote trauma within my reach—things I could in a way control. However, I discovered that in speaking about my personal hurt, I couldn’t ignore the larger sense of it felt across borders. I cannot tell a story of an assaulted cousin back home without the same experience being applicable to yet another Black person outside the country—baton for baton, or even worse. Both experiences are intertwined, irrespective of clime, and I felt the need to address with the title. Here, I began with some close-to-home issues and lent that voice to account for an overall collective grief. It rains everywhere, you know.
HD: Alongside trauma, resilience is also a recurring theme. Do you believe poetry itself plays a part in your own resilience?
NS: I pride myself as having always been resilient in whatever field I find myself. However, encountering poetry unlocked a level of resilience which I never thought I could attain. I watch myself in recent times, stretching to my limit and springing back to shape even stronger. I have become more bendable. Being a poet does this to you. This doggedness has transformed my life and spills into my poems as a currency for changing the narrative and systemic bias.
HD: Many of these poems contain vivid and at times gory bodily imagery. How does the body inspire your work?
NS: The body is one of the most fragile, delicate parts of us. Whatever harm comes to us first encounters the body, before pain is felt across all organs. It bears the damage for all our battle scars, trauma—seen or hidden. Therefore, it is ours to own, love, and cherish. Sometimes, it is the only place we seek asylum. The body imagery in my work seeks to connect the individual to the hurt and make sense of the wound on a more physical level. Our traumas are mostly internal, hidden and unaccounted. The body is a signpost, a showroom that tells these tales in bold blood.
HD: Some of these poems, such as “Nebulous Strike in Minnesota” and “Poems Like This Refuse Sound, My Cramp Bears Music Enough” contain multi-generational family stories and broken families, too. How do you think about inheritance in your poetry?
NS: I come from a very dysfunctional society with so many familial battles, sibling-inflicted scars, and bad blood. While some of this is self-created, some is inherited. When we pose together for a family photo, it all seems a façade. There are so many cases of trauma fought within, which never sees the light of the day. Without institutional ways to address these wounds, the hurt spirals down to yet another family and forms a multi-generational history of broken homes. I think about inheritance as the curse (be it good or bad) we put a face to and live off until our death. That albatross on the neck that just wouldn’t let go.
HD: There are a few mentions of religion in this collection. Can you speak to religious influences in your work?
NS: I grew up in a very religious home and have witnessed both the beauty and beast in religion. Two case studies here give an insight. When I alluded to “christening” a colleague’s daughter in the poem “Schwa: in a Sound Where All Consonants Means Loss,” I was referencing the potency of my religion. And then in “Poems Like This Refuse Sound,” the line “Sorrow playing Jesus, playing Lazarus cheap for those buying it—” condemns the pontification of this same religion by men of God who know of this familial trauma and instead of preaching against it, turns sorrow to sweet sermon. There is so much to unpack here, which I am exploring in a body of work titled Biblical Invasion, that might end up being my third chapbook in 2024. Fingers crossed for that one.
HD: Which poem(s) in this collection is/are closest to your heart?
NS: I deeply connect to all the poems in this collection, especially “Schwa: in a Sound Where All Consonants Means Loss.” However, the poem “A Boy Ago” seems the closest to my heart, majorly for its nostalgic effect and childhood memories.
Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a BA in English & Literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published or are forthcoming in Suburban Review, The Seventh Wave, Native Skin, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, FIYAH, Fantasy Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, The Deadlands, Commonwealth Writers, Jaggery, Foglifter, The Capilano Review, Lolwe, and elsewhere. He was the winner of the 2020 Canadian Open Drawer Contest, the 2021 Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers, the 2021 Penrose Poetry Prize, the 2021 Lakefly Poetry Contest, the 2021 International Human Rights Art Festival Award New York, and the 2022 Angela C. Mankiewicz Poetry Contest. He was the second prize winner of the 2022 The Bird in Your Hands Contest and the bronze winner for the 2022 Creative Future Writer’s Award. He also received an honorable mention for the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize. He is the author of Reopening of Wounds. He tweets at @Samuelsamba10.
Heather Domenicis (she/her) is an Upper Manhattan based writer and editor moonlighting at a tech startup. She holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from The New School and her words appear in Hobart, JAKE, and [sub]liminal. Born in a jail, she is writing a memoir about all that comes with that. She sometimes tweets @heatherlynnd11.
This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Cancer Voodooby Melissa C. Johnson, released by Diode Editions in 2022.
content warning for cancer
Treatment Room
“Two of our state-of-the-art infusion centers have sky-tile ceilings so that the patients have the illusion of looking up into the sky during therapy.”
The man on his three devices is doing business; he doesn’t doze, but hustles the nurses, taps on the keys, raps into the phone, his leg bouncing.
The elegant woman apologizes for removing her wig, the heavy stone of her ring falls toward her palm as she lifts her hands to her head, pats her blonde pageboy.
The young mother in her bright pink shirt is late; her husband has fallen from a ladder, is hurt, she is sorry for keeping the nurses from dinner.
Mama seems the sickest, the smallest, her veins collapsing and closing like tunnels in the sand her patience with the fumbling nurses at odds
with the rage she glints at my father, her care not to touch any surface in the shared restroom, her refusal to wash her hands, make conversation
with the shirt-sleeved minister who makes currents in the air as he circles the room with a predatory fixed smile, eager to describe the comforts of Paradise.
Even prisoners with armed guards their handcuffs removed for the IV, take their poison peacefully, sleepily
warmed and soothed by heated blankets, reclining chairs, murmuring nurses, children’s art, the table loaded with processed snacks, hot and cold drinks.
Like Vegas, there are no clocks and the sky is just a bulb without warmth or promises shining through blue and white painted glass.
Melissa C. Johnson is a Southern poet living in Central Pennsylvania where she serves as Associate Vice Provost and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her first poetry chapbook, Looking Twice at the World, was published by Stepping Stones Press and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. Diode Editions published her second chapbook, Cancer Voodoo, poems from which have been featured at American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily. Her poetry has also been published at NELLE, Waccamaw, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, The Northern Virginia Review, and elsewhere.
This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How Blood Worksby Ellene Glenn Moore, released by Kent State University Press in 2021.
In Lawrenceburg, Tennessee
At noon in Lawrence County the earth opens, red clay torn through, and in his casket my grandfather is as pale as wake-robin. I ask my father where I should sit, lean down to kiss my grandmother who does not know who I am. And now her hips are bothered, her hands are saying she’d rather be anywhere but here. We all are looking for escape— the door, the hall—but now my father speaks, his voice a scythe, and he says my dad, my dad, and in this space even the walls are wired. The bees, the honey, singing in a field. We bare our wrists, we rock open our hands, voices raised and falling in our laps for we don’t care to stay here long, my lord, the cleft in the rock, this clay beneath the floor. The clock in the hall rises over the shag, the mud, the beaten linoleum. Did you know your granddaddy composed songs, did you know he fixed that clock together in the woodshop, soft sun illuminating grit and motes, the concrete floor thrumming beneath his feet, the air too sweet to breathe.
Ellene Glenn Moore is an American writer living in Zürich. She is the author of How Blood Works (Kent State University Press, 2021), winner of the 2020 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Ellene’s poetry, lyric non-fiction, and critical work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, Brevity, West Branch, and elsewhere. Find her at elleneglennmoore.com.
Following the republishing of his bookWhat To Do If You’re Buried Alive this past month, Michael Meyehofer spoke with Doubleback Books editorial intern Camelia Heins about the choice behind the title along with reasons behind his references to religion, connections to the Midwest, and the use of comedy.
Camelia Heins: Your title really hooks people in and the title itself is the name of one of your poems. What inspired you to name this collection of works What To Do If You’re Buried Alive? Why did this poem specifically stand out to be the name of the entire collection?
Michael Meyerhofer: The original version of that poem was about three pages long and was inspired by research I did on actual people throughout the ages who’ve been inadvertently buried alive but lived to tell the tale. Gradually, though, I whittled it down until it ended up as the fairly short poem it is now. Since that one already felt like an allegory for dealing with depression—or, really, any kind of struggle that feels overwhelming and insurmountable, but probably actually isn’t—and a lot of my poems can have a bit of darkness or sardonic humor in them, it seemed like a fitting title poem for the collection.
CH: You section off the book into two sections, “Scars” and “Tattoos.” I think these words are particularly interesting, especially with how tattoos themselves can be seen as scars or as art. What is the significance behind sectioning off the book this way? Can you explain your reasoning behind choosing these two words?
MM: To be honest, I actually have to credit my late friend and mentor, Jon Tribble, for that! Many years ago, I was at critical mass in terms of having way too many poems that I was trying to fit into manuscripts, and he kindly volunteered to take a look at what I had. It was his idea to arrange the manuscript in two sections, with “Scars” and “Tattoos” used to distinguish between formative events and later, more deliberate choices. I eventually added what became the title poem and tweaked a few small things, but overall, it’s still as he arranged it. Jon was a kind, brilliant man, and like hundreds of poets out there, I owe him a lot!
CH: Many of your poems include some sort of unexpected twist or may catch people off guard. What influences can you attribute this style to? What kind of impact do you intend to make with these twists in your poems?
MM: I’m sure I’m far from the first person to say this, but I feel like there’s a lot of similarity between poems and Zen koans. I’ve always loved how koans end on a twist that makes sense in a way that’s wild and transcendent but can’t really be articulated—the way they tug our brains in directions we didn’t even know were possible. For most of my writing life, poetry has been an exercise in teaching myself to stop white-knuckling whatever story or meaning I’m trying to get across and just trusting the piece to end itself.
CH: It’s clear your work contains a touch of comedy and satire, seen in poems like “My Mother Sent Me” and “Dear Submitter.” Can you talk about how you use comedy and satire and what kind of effect these elements have on your work?
MM: There’s something transcendent and almost spiritual about humor—how it can let the air out of the worst tragedy and remind us in an instant that there’s a touch of absurdity in all our struggles and grief. Some of that might also come from growing up in Iowa, a state that’s beautiful but also rather stark and isolating, where deadpan humor is a must for getting through harsh winters surrounded by icy roads and fallow fields.
CH: You make quite a few religious references in your work, mentioning Catholic school, confessions, and more. Are you religious? How does your own religious background, whether positive or negative, influence your work?
MM: I grew up in a pretty religious small town and attended a Catholic school—I was even an altar boy, and spent many hours in a white robe seated at the impaled feet of a graphically carved Christ! As you might imagine, I was also dreadfully emo, pondering mortality and suffering from a very young age (inspired, I’m sure, by all the time I spent in hospitals because of birth defects and health problems). So I was fascinated by religious stories because they were the first places I went looking for answers. Later, I took every religion and philosophy class I could in college (I’m the annoying guy who could sweep the Bible category in Jeopardy). Ultimately, I came to realize that my religious interpretations weren’t Catholic so much as Zen Buddhist, and to really chafe at the sense of bashful shame and unnecessary guilt that seemed to permeate a lot of those early lessons—but those feelings and religious iconography will always be with me, I’m sure.
CH: As someone with a connection to the Midwest, I found it interesting and personal that you included many connections to the Midwest region and suburban/rural life. The poem “Suburbia” particularly stood out to me. How do you think a non-urban, more suburban/rural background shapes your work? What’s the appeal of focusing on suburban or rural life?
MM: I’ve lived in cities (of various sizes) for pretty much all my adult life, and I’ve come to see California as my home these last 9 or so years—but if you cracked my skull open, you’d probably still find a lone farmhouse surrounded by fields and tree-covered hills. The beautiful starkness of the Midwest has always seemed to me to be the perfect illustration of what it means to be human—there are people who love us, sure, but ultimately we’re on our own, so you’d better start figuring stuff out.
CH: I love your poem “Strata,” especially the imagery of lying on someone’s grave to understand the universe. I just have to ask, have you ever done that? And whether you did or didn’t, what was your reasoning behind choosing to use an image like this?
MM: Thank you! Yes, I have done that, actually. I don’t recall where the idea came from, but I’ve more or less always had the sense that if you want to reach any kind of understanding, you have to keep your lens clear and cast off as many inhibitions and taboos as you possibly can. That might be why I’ve always had a great deal of respect for spirituality and curiosity but almost none for ritual and dogma. I think irreverence can be an amazing artistic, spiritual, and intellectual tool, so long as it’s sincere and not just performative.
CH: Outside of your poetry work, I notice you also write fantasy novels. How would you say the idea of fantasy plays a role in your poems, if any?
MM: I’m a terrific nerd in real life! I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, so for me, there’s not that much difference between a poem, a novel, a short story, etc.—just slightly different attempts at the same thing. There are countless ways that I think fiction has helped my poetry, and vice versa—from imagery and storytelling to maybe a bit more awareness of how something actually sounds to the reader. Both sides also feed into my nerdiness too. When I’m not reading or writing, one of my favorite things is to watch documentaries about science, history, religion, etc. In fact, I love lifting weights (probably another thing tied to my childhood) and will often exercise while playing videos in the background on physics, mythology, and strategic analysis of battlefield tactics used a thousand years ago—it all gets thrown into the blender that is my brain for later use.
Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five poetry books, six poetry chapbooks, and two fantasy trilogies. He has won the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Prize, the Whirling Prize, and other honors. He earned his B.A. from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He grew up in Iowa where he learned the value of reading novels, lifting weights, and not getting his hopes up. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review and lives in Fresno, California. For more information and at least one embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.
Camelia Heins (she/her) is an undergraduate student studying English & Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Born and raised in Orange County, California, Camelia has been active in her community through service, engagement, and both creative and journalistic writing. She enjoys reading and writing poetry, listening to several of her Spotify playlists, collecting plants, and playing with her cat, Moira.
