by Gretchen Primack Some of your brother’s illness was there all along, some bloomed as he came of age. You came of age in the bunk below, his shrieks staining the ceiling, grease from his head staining the wall. He is still there. You climbed out how you could. You have a trace of […]
Author: Gretchen Primack
Gretchen Primack is the author of Kind, republished by Lantern Books in 2021; Visiting Days (Willow Books Editors Select Series); and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press). She also co-wrote, with Jenny Brown, the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Little Patuxent Review, and other journals and anthologies. Primack has administrated and taught with college programs and poetry workshops in prison for many years, and she moonlights at The Golden Notebook Bookstore in Woodstock, NY.
Cold Keen Pole
Time is a fire as tired as a tunnel and as tiredas a verb. Doris feels filled at night witha bitter mustard. She has given and got as hardas the rest, a princess of chafe, a sorcererof sore and apprentice to fault. She has winkedwhile the moon rolled its sour eye. Damn it, she wants […]
The Woman I’ve Become
Who cares?The world’s legis broken in two places,its wing in three. It hates the cagescrusting its body:the cages of weeddealers, the cagesof hens. The woman I’ve become wantsto open every one.You? Gretchen PrimackGretchen Primack is the author of Kind, republished by Lantern Books in 2021; Visiting Days (Willow Books Editors Select Series); and Doris’ Red […]