Alice’s Childhood

But there was the winter carnival
Rose thought was in honor of her
turning six, and none of them told her
any differently. Giant tiered floats like
white-frosted cakes, gauzy pink butterflies
teetering on stilts, and a ten-foot tree
raining lights down its sides. Rose stared
at the strong chestnut Clydesdales clopping
down Main Street, and the North Forsyth
Raiders in their red and black marching
uniforms, feathers in their caps trembling
with each step. When the nativity rolled past,
the crowd surged forward to see the plastic
savior. And Owen shoved his way to the edge
of the human path and grabbed a chocolate
Santa Claus, handed it to Rose without a word.
And Alice’s mother folded a crane out of
a receipt from her purse and tucked it into
Rose’s hair. And Alice held Rose up to see
above the crowd and said, Look at all of this—
All of this for you.

—

This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!

Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.

Alice Creates 100 New Jennys

 

Jenny #74: Alice, you are the greatest lover I have ever known

 Jenny #6: Alice, hold me

 Jenny #99: Alice, who can bury this freight, who can

 Jenny #20:                   toss the scraps

 Jenny #2:                     pledge this and this and

 Jenny #74: porous fruit bristling with mold

 

Jennys (as a chorus): where to wait is a language of desire

Jenny #5: [takes her hand and leads her to the silt shore of a river
scattersplit by fish]

 

—

This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!

Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.

Alice In Adolescentland

In eighth-grade algebra, Alice knit together equations for amount
of blood spilled during an average episode of Oz and wrote teen
manifestos on her graphing calculator. Then it was architecture
she loved, and sketches of levitating mosque-casinos bloomed on
the backs of her tests and homework. The teachers were obviously
concerned when they saw the grand domes and gold-plated peaks
towering among clouds. Has she fully processed her sister’s death? Is
this her conception of heaven? An opulent Vegas palace, a house of
worship where cards, money, algebra tests, and sacred text are all
just thin scraps from the same pile of wood chips.

—

This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!

Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.

Alice and Jenny in Their Land

In the thick-fingered January nights Alice and Jenny build
rooms of oceans and tall ships with oars miles long.
The intricate masts: firm birch braided with cedar,
resin-sealed and sewn with roots thicker than Jenny’s wrists.
Moonlight reflects white off the walls of the room and over
the sea. They walk the lengths of the oars, chewing mint leaves
Alice likes to taste on Jenny’s fingers and teeth. No sun to rise.
Soft waves grazing the ships. And when Alice builds a spar
high enough to skim the moon, Jenny touches her arm,
watches her lips, and says, enough.

—

This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!

Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.

Alice Writes Down Everything She Needs To Remember About Jenny

to lose weight for a play one month ate only saltine crackers

kept a white bishop in the pocket of her jacket for luck

played Maria

played Juliet

played Christine

played chess

took off all her clothes and led me to a pool on a skyscraper

shoots skeet with a shotgun

smells like an orchestra tuning and the sea

told me a fact about icebergs I didn’t know

lives in an old Methodist church

grandmother was a florist

doesn’t eat salmon

left side of the bed

blue

—

This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!

Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.