JoAnna Novak
$5
The door creaks & she pulls it shut.published in Ottawa by above/ground press
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?
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
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