Appendix Briar

Fig. 3a: Decorative.

Shaped as they grew into unicorns rearing or leaves carefully curated to reveal a giant
woman’s face, pillowed, dreaming.

Fig. 3b: Wild

A place to enter and go deeper. You fight yourself, fear bars the path, you keep going.
The sun struggles through the green.

Fig. 3c: Flowering

A crown for land, made of thorns. A place to nestle treasures, bewitched. You want to
be left alone. You’re always the first to draw blood.

ABOUT THE POET

Sarah Ann Winn’s first book, Alma Almanac, was selected by Elaine Equi as winner of the Barrow Street Book Prize, and was released by Barrow Street Press in 2017. She’s the author of five chapbooks. Her writing has appeared in many publications, online and in print, including Five Points, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, Smartish Pace and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. She currently teaches poetry workshops in Northern Virginia and the DC Metro area, and online at the Loft Literary Center. Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling.

ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST

Alexandra Eldridge, born of artist parents, received her BA in Art and literature at Ohio University. She co-founded an establishment for the arts, Golgonooza, based upon the philosophies of William Blake. She has had over 40 solo shows, and has participated in many group shows throughout the U.S. as well as many international exhibitions.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT EVER AFTER

In nineteen exhibits and appendices, Sarah Ann Winn catalogues the fairy tale world. Gretl is diagnosed with bulemia. “Snow White Under Glass” bemoans her “transparent hostage situation.” The tiny witches in a souvenir snow globe “refuse to answer questions” about their tattoos. Come one, come all: this fairy tale hall of mirrors is a delight to wander through. — Mary McMyne, author of Wolf Skin (dancing girl press, 2014)

“Some stories are unspeakable,” warns the opening poem of Ever After the End Matter, and “in retelling…sometimes sisters fragment.” In this chapbook, Sarah Ann Winn offers an exquisitely curated collection of fairy-tale fragments, startling (and sometimes smoldering) scraps and remnants, from the “ruby heels” of red geraniums to the spindle, “blood encrusted, kept in a red plastic hazardous waste bag.” Here artifacts suggest appetites, and with acute lyrical care, poems tell what longing can do to the body—of sleeping Snow White, who says, “I keep my dreams laced as my gut, fashion-fit,/ I can exhale them bit by bit,” and of a prodigal mermaid, whose “scales enfold her toe-tips, her knee/caps, her round hips.” Visiting the Grimm Forest Open Air Museum, and searching the collection’s haunting appendices, left me shaken like the witch’s market souvenir snow globe in one fine poem, but always longing for the next, “even as the sky goes to pieces.” — Sally Rosen Kindred, author of Says the Forest to the Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018)