Kristin Hatch’s poems in The Meatgirl Whatever are following the idea of “to serve.” Or more appropriately, the assumption that “necessary” is a part of “to serve.” Like that’s where a lyric honoring the service industry would start. It’s necessary to serve!
Testament is…bound up in fluid and scenic meditations on the nature of writing, and how this process infiltrates, informs, or overrides reality, time, identity and history.
Yes, these are poems of belief and faith, of hope, and they reach toward those emotions through a careful unpeeling of older poetic adages
for my wife, nalani, and our 6-month-old daughter, kaikainali’i, hawai’i 2014 [we] take kaikainali’i to the pediatrician— outbreak of enterovirus D68 in new york— the nurse recites the vaccines and expiration dates— outbreak of chikungunya in the caribbean florida, tokelau— nalani holds kaikainali’i and sings a mele [we] learned during hapai class at kokua kalihi […]
The Three Bridges on Ohio River between East Liverpool and Steubenville, Ohio Don’t worry, I promise, it won’t last long. They take one leg, then the other, and hold you on the table until their job is done. I wouldn’t lie, it hurts, the way they pry you open with their needles and crooks, […]
4. To know yourself better practice forgetting. Infinite circles fit in a line. When I see the phone I want to call my mother. I take a class to learn about an actor’s tool, the neutral mask. My favorite mirror though is Ahab Caught on the deck in the eyes of Starbuck, The moment […]
These are the nights we burn couches. We carry them each like a paisley casket up from a basement lit year-round by strung-up Christmas lights and joints, out from a living room floored with carpet damp and soft as cheese; we curl our fingers under the frame, dodge florets of mold, lift the armrest nose […]
Haldeman’s poems examine the intricacies of the unknown, the unexpected, and share a first-person diary of shifting when the earth moves, holding steady when the wind dies down.
what is fascinating about this collection is the way it gives us an entire life of writing, an entire life of discovery, in miniature
In this debut collection, the speaker is a ballerina—full of control and beauty, poise and restriction—who loses her mother, her romantic partner, and—for a time—her own identity.