new from above/ground press: Trust Only the Beasts in the Water, by Conyer Clayton

Trust Only the Beasts in the Water
Conyer Clayton
$5

Growth

My mac-and-cheese is cold. If I complain about it, I'm never allowed to eat again. I get into a van with the other children. We're driven across a windless landscape, skin-grey and hollow. The room we enter is full of beds. Blinds drawn. They tell us, the habits you make today will last for the rest of your lives. In the bathroom, I realize the mole on my neck has grown to epic proportions. I use it as a cape — fly to bed. As a blanket. It cannot be removed. I wouldn't let them if they tried. Burrow in. Sleeping bag. The habits I build today will last for the rest of my life. I will always be this silent girl wrapped in her own skin. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image by Kelsea Shore

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are: / (post ghost press, 2019),  Undergrowth (bird, buried press), Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press), and For the Birds. For the Humans. (battleaxe press). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. She won Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, 3rd place in Prairie Fire's 2017 Poetry Contest, and honourable mention in The Fiddlehead's 2018 poetry prize. She is a member of the sound poetry ensemble Quatuor Gualuor, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full length collection of poetry is forthcoming in Spring 2020.

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