Stella Reed
“Myth from the field where the fox runs with its tail on fire is a book of grit, of faith, of wondrous creaturely light. In this chapbook I found a voice burning with the kind of questions I did not know I needed to ask myself – among them ‘What can a mother wish for a daughter?’ Here are poems of exceptional style that lit a fire in my heart, that rooted me, that dared to ask ‘Do you remember how we lived/before danger?'”
Annemarie Ní Churreáin
from In the Village of Silence
In the Village of Silence, we press index fingers to the lips of the
newborn, the imprint leaving a gutter for the collection of tears and
mucus. We teach them to forget, muzzle them with hush, weave their
ears shut with the floss of their grandmother’s silk. They are left
in the dark, their faces pressed against screens to feel the vibration of
voices, their cheeks smell of moth wings and lost keys.
When the wind drifts with pollen the people remember the village
stands at the edge of a ghost river. Air flows over the dry bed and
rinses the bones of the dead. Birds perch between ribs and sing the
forgotten songs. The dead rise, shoulders tattooed with galleons. Each
square inch of missing skin a crosshatch of bruises. Our tongues unfurl
in the night pulling taut as ship’s rigging, and the sails billow. The wild
dogs that roam the arroyos catch the birds and capture our songs. We
cannot speak, cannot sing.
$14 – ISBN 978-0-9845740-5-6