Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem
by Kristi Carter
Carter’s work investigates the intersection of intergenerational trauma, survival, feminism, and power. Body-heavy and image-rich, these poems evoke a landscape of the scars and blood we carry with us, all the things that make up our lineage of memory and modes of recovery/survival/learning. It’s an intensely intimate series of poems about the claiming and finding of voice, body, and agency. “And ever since I anchored myself to the ground / and split off from myself, from the cracked husk / of girlhood finished, I return replenished. / I return, to burn. / I return, with the wound / like a medal—in its gleam, how it sings.” (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
40 pages
screenprinted cover
numbered editions of 50
Additional Info
EXCERPT
MY MOTHER IS CERTAIN
a man will cut me,
so she takes off my skin.
Says, Get the mop:
you were born to bleed.
All night, I swirl the limp yarns
across my shadow. Not allowed
to stand in place.
With my pelt tight on her body
my mother sleeps while the mop drags
behind my footprints like a beaten dog.
In the kitchen, the vinyl floor
squeaks into a shine. Reflects
the moon as it shrinks behind a cloud.
With the mop, I erase. Fact:
my daughter will be cut.
May scars, not blood, map her way home.
ABOUT THE POET
Kristi Carter is a PhD student in Creative Writing–Poetry with a specialization in Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Nebraska Lincoln. Her poems have appeared in publications including So to Speak, poemmemoirstory, CALYX, Hawaii Review, and Nimrod. Her work examines of the intersection of gender and intergenerational trauma in 20th Century poetics. She holds an MFA from Oklahoma State University.
ABOUT THE COVER
Screenprint covers are pulled by hand with a metallic copper ink on 80# black, linen-texture stock. Each book is hand-trimmed, numbered, and sewn with heavy thread. Hand-numered editions of 50. Printmaker Nicci Mechler, IG: @wickedlittleheart.
OTHER BOOKS
Cosmovore (Aqueduct Press, 2017)
NOMINATIONS
nominated for the Elgin Award in 2018
“My Mother Is Certain” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017