new from above/ground press: whittle gristle, by Lori Anderson Moseman

whittle gristle
Lori Anderson Moseman
$5

Kerf

Kerf, the space left by a saw blade,
lets grass blades thrive between
gang planks serving as tables
upturned to become raised beds.
Each surrogate coffin piled on top
of another is mortared together
with fertile soil blessed with seeds.
Combating sterile, reified space,
grass grows tall between table slats—
tall enough to bend like widows
keening with grief, grasping for light.
Doris Salcedo’s Plegaria Muda
is watered by testimony of mothers
of the disappeared in Columbia.
Victims of gang killings in LA
are harbored here, resting
like dry docked skiffs waiting
for a marsh to silt in, for meadow
to offer a softer landing.
Upended table legs are divining rods
hovering over those we won’t forget.
In an act of love, of weekly tending,
docents dutifully trim this grass respite.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

For Lori Anderson Moseman’s recent work, see Quietly Between, a 2022 poetry/photography collaboration available from A Viewing Space. Her recent experimental poetry collections include Darn (Delete Press, 2021) and Y (Operating System, 2019). For her artist book collaboration with Karen Pava Randal, see Full Quiver (Propolis Press, 2015) and Flash Mob (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). Her collaborations with Brazilian printmaker Sheila Goloborotko include “Jarring Bits” (Talon Review, 2019), “insistence, teeth” (Dusie.org, 2014), Creation (2012), um daqueles lugares sublimes (2008). See https://loriandersonmoseman.com

This is Moseman’s third title with above/ground press, following Okay (2023) and Too Few Words (2023).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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