Congrats to Jeannine Hall Gailey whose Becoming the Villainess is just out from Steel Toe Books. I am enjoying how she weaves myth and fable with personal history. Here's a taste:


The Changeling

I went to bed a secretary
but woke up a wolf,
clothes in shreds on the floor.

It is as you fear;
beneath the push-up bra,
the false set of eyelashes,
I am fundamentally "other."
I am not what I seem.

You will weep
when I disappear,
and never miss
the infant I stole
from your cradle.


Also enjoying Collin Kelly's new chapbook Slow to Burn. It's fascinating that he and Jeannine both have poems about Wonder Woman! Here's the opening of Collin's:

Wonder Woman

The day I told my parents I wanted to trade in
G.I. Joe for Wonder Woman must have set off alarms.
I wanted to surrender my guns for the golden lasso,
more than dolls, mind you, I wanted to be
Wonder woman.
I don't remember who stitched the costume,
blue underwear with glued on stars, a red bustier
wrapped around my seven year old sunken chest,
the golden eagle oddly deflated . . . .