Brazen Creature

Anne Barngrover

• Publisher: The University of Akron Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781629220802
• eBook ISBN: 9781629220826
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Brazen Creature spans a young woman's awakening. The poems' concerns are twofold: violence against women and girls that has become rooted in the land, and verdant female desire and self-assertion in the face of entrenched oppression. In the poems' Midwestern towns and farmlands, patriarchy is a ghost that haunts the cottonwoods, soybean fields, and creek beds. The speaker is in limbo between fear and yearning, vulnerability and transgression, drought and flood, saving a life and needing to be saved.

Contents

Hallucinate the House, Hallucinate the Woods

Egg and Ash

He Vows to Follow Me Even After He Leaves Me

Prudesville, USA

Science of Uncertainty

The Waiting Girl Sobers Up in the Same Room as Before

Finding Out the Lie One Year Later

If That Isn’t a Sign Then God Knows What Is

Questions for When We Meet Again

Every Time an Ex-Boyfriend Calls You Irrational, a Woodchuck Gains Its Wings

Erasure | Phenomenon

Self-Portrait with Brown Recluse

Bastille Day

Hideaway

Fourteen

Thief Hallow Branch, Arkansas

He Takes Her

If I Start Talking About It Now I Won’t Stop Hollering

The Waiting Girl Sweats Out a Fever

The one drag show in town is closing

Show-Me State

Home Video, 1987

Dock and Withers

Rather than run into you at a bar, I drove out for an hour on gravel roads

A Beautiful Night for a Biscuit Truck

The month after the cruelest month

Incident in Northwestern Missouri

Hypochondria

Survival Tactics

White and Rain

After Yet Another Man Tells Me I Don’t Want to Hurt You

Disassociation

Sapwood, Heartwood, Pith

You apologized to me in the passive voice

He Hates What I Do

Little Birds

The Waiting Girl Feels a Pulsing Where There Is No Child

Your Name in My Boot

Still Haunted

In Defense of Not Getting Over It, at Least Not for Now

Salt Creek, Missouri

Midwestern Litany

Site Fidelity

Play the Fool

The Encounter

Vow

Acknowledgments

Hallucinate the House, Hallucinate the Woods

I should have known that this was coming: my home

was not my home long before the crickets found

their way inside with the rain, the smell of a gas leak,

the man I did not know who circled in the poison ivy

and pressed his hands full-palmed against my windowpanes

without apology, until one, still locked, gave. I don’t care

about making amends any longer: to forgive is to betray.

A woman’s home is her house and her house is her body,

and so on nights when the sky is lit like a violet lantern,

when there are no stars, small animals from the woods

claw a dark labyrinth in the walls and I wake to a bomb

going off inside my own head and the ghosts of flashlights

glow against the windowpanes of my brain—a parasomnia

so rare doctors won’t bother to record. I feel like a wasp

nest nailed to a door, all the stingers dried to rose thorns. Oh,

I am the fool mouse and the fool bird. And if you are brave

enough to love me, then close your eyes and count the horses

made black by nightfall in the pastures eight houses beyond

my own. At night they are muscle and fog. Leave your party

early with a plastic bag full of strawberries because I only

want you near if your palms are stained and your tongue

saccharine with promises too dull to keep, with words

meaningless as the sound of my name being called out loud

by no one as I wake from dreams. What else could I do

for love but answer? Bombs go off all the time now. All night

long, I hear the animals finding their way back to the wild.

Egg and Ash

Sometimes a ghost is not a ghost

but a sink of water filled to the brim.

My friend paints over the nicotine

stains that her husband left behind

as her dog whines in rusty circles.

I spend too much on too little

sympathy until there’s none. Spring,

tiny losses fizz the pond’s electric

scrim. Birds feel it first—eggshells

litter...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Hallucinate the House, Hallucinate the Woods
• Egg and Ash
• He Vows to Follow Me Even After He Leaves Me
• Prudesville, USA
• Science of Uncertainty
• The Waiting Girl Sobers Up in the Same Room as Before
• Finding Out the Lie One Year Later
• If That Isn’t a Sign Then God Knows What Is
• Questions for When We Meet Again
• Every Time an Ex-Boyfriend Calls You Irrational, a Woodchuck Gains Its Wings
• Erasure | Phenomenon
• Self-Portrait with Brown Recluse
• Bastille Day
• Hideaway
• Fourteen
• Thief Hallow Branch, Arkansas
• He Takes Her
• If I Start Talking About It Now I Won’t Stop Hollering
• The Waiting Girl Sweats Out a Fever
• The one drag show in town is closing
• Show-Me State
• Home Video, 1987
• Dock and Withers
• Rather than run into you at a bar, I drove out for an hour on gravel roads
• A Beautiful Night for a Biscuit Truck
• The month after the cruelest month
• Incident in Northwestern Missouri
• Hypochondria
• Survival Tactics
• White and Rain
• After Yet Another Man Tells Me I Don’t Want to Hurt You
• Disassociation
• Sapwood, Heartwood, Pith
• You apologized to me in the passive voice
• He Hates What I Do
• Little Birds
• The Waiting Girl Feels a Pulsing Where There Is No Child
• Your Name in My Boot
• Still Haunted
• In Defense of Not Getting Over It, at Least Not for Now
• Salt Creek, Missouri
• Midwestern Litany
• Site Fidelity
• Play the Fool
• The Encounter
• Vow
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author