My chapbook, Children Having Trouble with Meat, is now available!

http://www.lulu.com/content/846234

From the introduction by Jack Anders: Christine Hamm’s chapbook,
“Children Having Trouble with Meat” shows an admirable ability to balance metaphorical intensity while keeping focus on a clearly stated theme. The poems display a sensibility to food, and eating, and the existential implications of both, in a way which is both a contemporary commentary on eating disorders, and a delicate allusion to myths of eating and being.

Christine Hamm is getting her PhD in English and was a runner-up for the Queens Poet Laureate. This work, her third chapbook, was chosen by Jenni Russell out of a hundred entries to MiPoesias. In 2006, Mayapple Press published Christine's full-length poetry book, The Transparent Dinner. Christine likes a well-done flank steak every once and a while.

Sample from the book:

Qualities of Sugar

it is white and sometimes it is brown

on the kitchen floor it attracts ants

sometimes in the bag during the summer
if it's kept low down on the bottom shelf
you will encounter little black maggots,
already dead, when you open the flap

when you try to wipe it off on your shorts
it clings to your hands and folds into rolls of dirty
white grit in the creases of your palms

it doesn't feel very good if you just put
a tablespoon on your tongue
it can choke you, going down
and then you need some pepsi

your dentist gives you lollipops, which have sugar

when you try to lift the whole bag
by yourself and it rips and spills
into a tiny beach just for dolls
then your mother will be disappointed
it can make her sigh

you often add it on top of bread or cheese
to see if they will taste better

when it is frozen in the form of a green popsicle
you and your brother will hit each other
in the face to get it first

when you mix it with water in a clear glass
it moves about a bit
and disappears

sometimes at night it's all that's left and it's enough
to keep you busy a short while until you realize
the house is empty
and you begin to howl


And the first ten people who buy a book (and email me with your address, at inktastesbitter@yahoo.com) get this on 8.5" x 4.5" card stock: