Just Now Alive by Kristina Bicher. This collection will be released July, 2014, but trust me and preorder it now. Kristina (along with Doritt Carroll, whose poetry collection is also on this list) has lured me back to the wonderful world of poetry. Here is one of Kristina’s poems:
The Woodcutter’s Wife
Is Gretel happy?
Why does she run from me into the trees?
Why does she stare at her feet?
Why does she chew her braids?
Why does she cut herself with sticks, at night, and the blankets
are spotted dark and I wash and I wash?
Why does she try to clean herself with leaves?
What is to be done with Hansel?
Why does he hide my paring knife?
Why does he fill my shoes with stones?
Why does he sit on my lap, now at 12, and stroke my cheek
and twist my hair?
Why does his skin always smell though I use my best lye?
Why does he steal his sister’s bread?
Husband, dearest, where do you go?
How far do you roam to look for wood?
Why has your axe blade grown dull?
Why do you return home after dark and bring home the silence of the forest in your eyes?
Why do you ask if I’d like meat, perhaps a fat ham, when you know
I could live on your love?
Why do you furrow and gnaw at your knuckles?
And what do you see out the window?