Just a little tweak to remind you:


The latest poems by Christine Hamm. This is a dark and amusing collection of fractured fairytales -- where mothers poison their children, dogs are avenging angels, and husbands turn into cats and cheeses.
buy here.

The next person who buys a copy will get a two dollar cash refund directly from me -- if you feel like giving me your address. If I don't sell one more copy soon all my royalties for the year are going to be re-absorbed(not that they're much...)

I've been struggling with creating a bio for Rattle, who accepted my poem in November and is getting quite antsy to receive it. (whines) But it's hard! They didn't want a traditional bio, but something more about why I write. So I finally came up with this:

I have been a writer since kindergarten, when I wrote illustrated tales of shapeless purple monsters eating everyone and then crying. My themes haven’t changed much since then. I came to poetry after writing fiction for many years – I eventually came to dislike the awkwardness of “plots” and how false they seemed. Poetry seems to claim a lot less than fiction, and question more and in a way, leave more space in the universe. I read once in a Zen magazine that poetry is about “the space around it” – the white page between line breaks, the gap between the poem and the bottom of the page – and I think my writing tries to make peace with the space, use it in a way that gives the reader an opportunity to pause and make their own way, whatever that means.

I was part of a wonderful reading at the Pen and Brush club in NYC, one of the oldest all women arts club in the country. Nobody laughed at the right parts of the poems (eek) but several people came up to me afterwards and said wow.

I also just got some poems accepted by the Moonwort Review. They said my poetry would be "a shot in the arm for the poetry section", which is good, I think.

Said to Her First Boy

some nights I slipped my pocket knife
under the latch of your screen door lifted
peeled back the stinking blanket
from your knuckle-fisted chest

the streetlight the moon rubbed patches
on your shoulders chin cheeks
abrasions of light
your breath sigh catch pause
an engine with a gear that slips

I could see the rabbit scuttle
just under your skin life-sized
outlined over your ribs your heart
now lower the torso shuddering

a snowshoe hare I could tell one so white
it disappears in winter is perhaps
a clump of ice and powder under a bush
perhaps the patch of whited sky
in the maple

I watched its frightened rapid beating
breathing until I did the only
humane thing I cut it free

it burst like a flock of frostbitten
flamingos all dangling legs and detritus
of feathers a storm of wings towering
white and pink

it thanked me I could see it
in your eyes opals white

tiny rabbits of light

This was written in response to the hare poem contest here.

I'm also thinking about one for Durer's Hare. You know, the famous etching.

I haven't visited for a while. It's not that I haven't been thinking of you, but I've been a busy bee (or "B"). I made an alphabet book!
The pictures are vintage, and the words just odd.

Today, for example, was brought to you by the letter R. I like this one, because she's oh so nonchalantly just about to be run over.




It's soft cover right now, but I'm trying to find a publisher to make it hardcover. Buy it here.

It's done. I made it. I used number 1! Thanks so much, everyone who voted. Now go here and buy the book: Discount Heaven. It has many brand new poems, for a total of 45 pages of juicy, scary poetry. Yet it is still rated G. There are no swear words or cocks in Discount Heaven. Just a lot of subtle psychological torture (as well as a couple dead babies). And homicidal deer.

Here's how the front and back look together:


And if you have interest in the calendar: go here. If 4 more people buy books or calendars, I'll actually get my first royalty check! 20 dollars! Lulu doesn't pay out until your royalties reach 20. I think I will buy another cat with the money. Or perhaps... a giraffe?

So, new year, new book. I decided to retire "poems for my mother" (soppy title) and incorporate that poetry into a new book: Discount Heaven. Please vote on album ( I mean book) covers.

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