Grief Map

My Tall Handsome: Poems

Emily Corwin

Mineral Point Poetry Series, no. 4 • Release Date: March 14, 2016

Print ISBN: 978-1-942083-34-4 • Ebook ISBN: 978-1-942083-35-1

Brain Mill Press offers My Tall Handsome for direct sale in ebook and in a limited fine first edition printing of signed, numbered paperbacks. Ebook buyers receive access to MOBI (Kindle), EPUB, and PDF files, offered without DRM restrictions. Print book buyers receive a physical copy of the book as well as access to the ebook files in all formats.

"When the cutie-pie was opened, the birds began to sing, and what they sang was glittery and savage and fearless and dangerous—be careful with this book."

—Catherine Wagner, author of Nervous Device

 

"The twenty-first-century witchery that sprinkles glitter everywhere in My Tall Handsome allows for us to cheer on the speaker in her quest for finding love, seeking revenge—or even raising the dead."

—Ploughshares

The fanged fairy of Emily Corwin’s forest-mud-stained collection asserts and sings with short rhymes and glitter-spells, and just as you’ve followed her into the deepest and darkest part of the woods, terrified, you’re asked to run away together / and promise to never / do this heart-skipping thing / with anyone else.

Don’t be surprised when you find yourself answering yes, yes, yes.

Confronting and darling, every word a perfect warm circlet of pink blood, My Tall Handsome raids every crystal jar on the lace-topped vanity for truth, poison, and song until you can’t remember why you ever thought pretty was better than powerful, sugar was better than bitter medicine, or dancing needed more music than your own voice.

I sip the goblet down, tip it upside down / wear it as / a hat / I am a new shiny thing / and I steal you away from the hoopla hullabaloo rumpus

You won’t resist this kidnapping into the orchard, into the crabapple abracadabra—it is too crystalline a taking, and there are too many delicious chants to chant along the way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Corwin is a Midwestern girl who loves all things pretty and spooky. This past summer, she completed her MA at Miami University, where she studied poetry, and in the fall she will be an MFA candidate at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her writing has been published (or is forthcoming) in Midwestern Gothic, Split Rock Review, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Lipstick Party, and Fractal.

AN EXCERPT from My Tall Handsome: Poems by Emily Corwin

© Emily Corwin, 2016. All rights reserved.

 

1

my tall handsome, you are always

hydrangea in my rib, popped open

always dazzle of salt on my punched lip

 

love of life

the he & me I will devour

 

we beneath black cherry tree

all fruits and crystals on your chest

 

you were my first body—now and always

forever and ever, in the pink bed rippling

amen.

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