In this debut collection, Anna Journey invites the reader into her peculiar, noir universe nourished with sex and mortality. Her poems are haunted by demons, ghosts, and even the living who wander exotic landscapes that appear at once threatening and seductive. In these poems, her sly speaker renames a pink hibiscus on display at Lowe's, "Lucifer's Panties"; another character chants, "I'd fall devil / over heels over edge over oleander"; and one woman writes a letter to the underworld:
Dear black bayou, once, by a river
I bit a man's neck. His scent: the raw
teak air husked inside stomachs of six
Russian nesting dolls—the ones in the attic I pulled
ANNA JOURNEY’s poems have been published in a number of journals, including American Poetry Review, FIELD, and Kenyon Review, and her essays have appeared in Blackbird, Notes on Contemporary Literature, and Parnassus.
ANNA JOURNEY’s poems have been published in a number of journals, including American Poetry Review, FIELD, and Kenyon Review, and her essays have appeared in Blackbird, Notes on Contemporary Literature, and Parnassus.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
One Adorable Siren, Do You Love the Damned? 3 Lucifer’s Panties at Lowe’s Garden Center 5 A Rabbit Must Be Walking 7 My Great-Grandparents Return to the World as Closed Magnolia Buds 9 Fox-Girl before Birth 11 Drowned Angel Blues 12 Autobiography as Endless Calico 13 Letter to the City Bayou by Its Sign: Beware Alligators 15 Visitation of the Rose 17 A Skulk Is a Group of Foxes 18 Apparition with Toenail Music 21 Corpse Flowers and Grackles 23
Two The Shapeshifter Introduces Her Village to the Moon 27 The Mirror’s Lake Is Forever 29 He has given his face to the waters of the lake 32 Charm against the Dead’s Interference with the Satellite 33 Since the Rabbit Was Singing 36 Elegy: After Filling Out Egg-Donation Forms 38 The Child Keats 42 Birdstorm 43 Snipers in the Arrangement 45 The Gypsy’s Late Arrival 47
Three A Crawdad’ll Hold Until It Hears Thunder 51 Return as Black Currant 52 Sappho on the Edge of the Bayou 54 Rose Is Dead and Crashes the Party 55 Elegy: I Pass by the Erotic Bakery 57 The Nude Model, Scary Mary, Shifts on Her Satin Pillow 59 Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (1) 61 Clockwork Erotica: Why He Takes Off His Glasses When Telekinesis Fails 62 Gachet Dresses the Wound 63 Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (2) 64 Walking Upright in a Field of Devils 66
Four Carnival Afterlife 71 Madman and the Royal Shapes of His Cloud 73 Birdskull, Cedar, Rosemary, Stone 75 Nude Girls to Pluto 77 The Foot Wing of Carolina’s Artificial Limb Factory 79 The Nurse’s Diagram of the Tracheotomy 82 Dissecting the Automaton 84 Backwater Blues 85 Dark Mouth like a Lullaby’s 87 If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting 88 Red-Haired Girl Wants You to Know 89
