Chapbooks
Chapbooks
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[excerpt:]
"I’ve walked away from books, people, places, and things because I could not see them, even if they were right there in front of me. (Someday I’ll tell you about California, and how I could not see it). Sometimes it’s easier, at first, to face the ones who turn away than to linger in the glow. But when we take the time to linger, we start to see the constellations we could never really see. A map begins to unfold—a map to uncovering.
The windows of my apartment look out on the gap between two brick buildings across the street. Every ten minutes or so, the Kimball train goes by. I hear it before it arrives, and then, for a brief moment, I see it in the gap between the buildings. At night, the windows of the train are a bright white, illuminating. First the train goes by in one direction, then the other. Sometimes, they pass each other at the same time. Then, the street grows quiet again."6.5" x 8.5" saddle-stitch chapbook printed on high quality 24lb text paper. Cover design by C. Annarummo
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In apostrophe reminiscent of Ginsberg's "America," Naomi Washer's American Girl Doll addresses the conditions, frustrations, and expectations of our monolithic and problematic country through a lens that seems both extrinsic and intrinsic, the self being called into the same rhetorical criticism as the setting that conditioned it.
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We gather orange peels in the palms of our hands. We huddle in stairwells, in schoolhalls, to dream.
We believe in other versions of our selves.
Where we roam is not our home but even so we live there; there where the leaves crunch beneath our feet and the doors creak and fall upon their hinges. There where we break in—through the window—with our boots—following this constant home-bound desire.
If there are two kinds of fear, then we are ever fearful that the door we stay out looking for—the red door, falling on its hinges and peeling—will forever elude us, will forever be one state over, there where the other self is kissing his bride and going off to war.