BOOK REVIEW David Rigsbee reviews Long Lens: New & Selected Poems by Peter Makuck
David Rigsbee reviews No Other Paradise by Kurt Brown
Emma Bolden's chapbooks include How to Recognize a Lady (part of Edge by Edge, Toadlily Press), The Mariner's Wife (Finishing Line Press), and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press). She was a semi-finalist for the Perugia Press Book Prize and a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship.
The Witch Is Called and Answers
—from a book-length series that follows the story of one 16th century
witch who is at first praised by the village but then accused of witchcraft,
put to trial, and burned at the stake, these poems explore the intersection
of forces which led to the persecution and execution of thousands of people,
particularly women, whom society deemed as different and therefore dangerous.
The rye curled into itself the fields
a thousand fists of grain raised dry
to accuse the perpetual azure
priests came with their waters
which their God ignored turning on us
forever His disastrous
patience His fatal blue I was called
after the thirteenth cow died from want
of grazing henbane and hazel
branch I traced a circle
in oak woods I made
with Him a bargain o God take
from me anything to grant me
this power your power o power
it rained
each cloud a gash
of mouth through which sky
screamed rain and hail and I
in God's answer whirled wet
robes the hands
of the village praised me
my name as it rained
my rain which would
not stop until the flood's
gray feet kicked down
the strongest home
The Villagers Make Known Their Warning to the Witch
In winter's wake the men planted a fire
in the cleared field warmed their arms readied
for the necessary cruelties of civilization a rat
the fattest one found in the fields scorched by dogwood
the long slow note of its throat vanished
to ash each tooth charred a warning to the others teeth
stay in the safe wet pouch of the mouth do not
dig the tubers while tender never pierce the young
leaves at their sweetest for men there is power in this
fire eager as a cat lapping the skin off the body
of cream in the far fields around their young
the mothers huddled transformed to a thousand needles quaking
