THE BOOK HAS ARRIVED!

I'm looking for reviewers -- if you have a journal/website/etc. where you regularly write reviews, please let me know, and I may be able to send you a free copy in exchange for a review.

Here's the whole flyer of info for the book; spread it around!

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Description
A fierce book of poetry based on historical and mythical saints and cannibals, including Saint Claire and Hansel & Gretel.

Reviewers say:

"it's hard to tell at times who are the saints and who are the cannibals... Hamm explores the boundaries of the body in exquisite detail; puberty, cancer, eating disorders, and the lure and horrors of modern medicine escalate into fertility rites, witches, and the heartbreaking loss of childhood. These poems do not dally in Victorian daydreams or ruffled pinafores. They are feral. They shriek and bite and get under your skin."

Rebecca Loudon
Author of "Cadaver Dogs"


Sample Poems


In This Dream, The Sky Signifies Memory


I’m standing in my blue flannel nightgown
at the window. The tops of the California oaks
shimmer below me in the wind. I’m walking barefoot
down the center of a gravel road -- I’m sweating
and my nightgown pinches at the armpits, the neck.


I am getting a baby out of a drawer. The baby
is the color of fog: he is sleeping or dead.
He is too heavy to carry, so I leave him
by the side of the road. I am spitting out persimmon
seeds into the cup beside the TV.


I am climbing a ladder over a hedge made of old
keyboards and kites. I am waking up; I am not
wanting to wake up. Someone is calling my cat.
My cat purrs and spits into my eye. She has
gathered tigers around me. I put on my pointed
leather slippers and climb on to the back
the biggest one. We go searching for my baby.
The sky is the color of water, falling.




Modern Maid


Joan of Arc works at the Gap.
Her armor, nearly invisible under
the florescent light, catches on the sweaters
she folds, so that cashmere threads
follow her everywhere, a crimson cape.
She can't remember how she got here:
most days, can't remember her name when she gets up,
but knows where her keys are,
and what bus to take to work.
God speaks to her sideways,
flickering reflections in the
napkin dispenser at the diner,
upside down when she licks
the ice cream clean from her spoon.
Joan sees pinions behind her when she uses the ATM.
There's angels, sometimes angry and frightening,
often white, and always in her dreams.
They smell like straw and milk...
Joan is sixteen. She's always sixteen.
She's so blond her eyebrows disappear.
She has freckles and is serious,
chews off her lipstick.
She'll heal you if you ask nice,
and go back behind the 501s with her.
Her name means "God is gracious."
Sometimes when she's stacking the perfume
called heaven
she remembers this is true.



About the author:

Christine Hamm is a PhD candidate in English Literature, specializing in 20th century poetics. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in The Adirondack Review, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, and many others. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at CUNY. She has performed all over the country, and was one of the featured poets in the Poetic Voices Festival of Hartnell College. The Transparent Dinner, her book of poems, was published by Mayapple Press in 2006. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.

For poetry samples, go to: chamm.blogspot.com

SAINTS & CANNIBALS

82 pgs

Ships in 1-2 weeks