above/ground press: JoAnna Novak

Une Couronne Cassée ~~Pour Ma Sœur~~
JoAnna Novak
$5

The door creaks & she pulls it shut.
My sister is afraid. Her white gown
    doesn’t really close, her veil, parted
lips, open palms, psalms sung, one
    bed to another. Pewed-prayers, her voice
bread not bred, hips hitched to the body
    of the man under her tongue. This
will not be simple. She is so busy being
    vernacular & vain, missal-less
in the neighbor’s garden. Birds. Bouqueting
    kale. Enkindled kindness, tithes,
she removes her shoes to become a pronoun.
    Stone beneath her skirts, down she goes.
What vibrates in those eighteenth-century walls?

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

JoAnna Novak latest book Domestirexia: Poems was published by Soft Skull in 2024. She is the author of the memoir Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood. Novak’s short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is also the author of the novel I Must Have You and three additional books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications.

This is Novak’s second above/ground press title, after Knife with Oral Greed (2021)

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Knife with Oral Greed
JoAnna Novak
$5

The barefoot
heroine, white
wax on her front
teeth, drags the
book across the rug.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

JoAnna Novak’s debut memoir Contradiction Days will be published by Catapult in 2022. Her short story collection, Meaningful Work, won the 2020 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and will be published by FC2 in August. Her third book of poetry, New Life, will be published by Black Lawrence Press later in 2021. She is the author of the novel I Must Have You and two previous books of poetry: Noirmania and Abeyance, North America. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com