Come see and hear Jenn McCreary live at the E-Verse Spring Equinox at Fergie’s Pub!

E-Verse Equinox Presents Sarah Arvio and Jennifer McCreary

Sarah Arvio, author of Night Thoughts (Knopf, 2013), with Jennifer McCreary, author of & Now My Feet Are Maps (Dusie Press, 2013)

Hosted by Ernest Hilbert
Open microphone session hosted by Paul Siegell to follow featured readers
March 19th, 2013, 7PM
Upstairs at Fergie’s Pub, 1214 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102, 215-928-8118

FREE!

* * *

Five Poems from the “Haunted Forest” Sequence by Jenn McCreary

after SJ Hart

Comfort isn’t necessarily comfortable, after all; sometimes you gotta wander into the woods. Everybody knows that. — Rat Girl, Kristin Hersh

“We Changed the Story, We Solved the Problem”

These are the fables I reconstruct
as the birds sing
about the murder. Mystery
& then goodnight.

Remember, I too
am a monster. See here
my avatar of chaos.

“Sometimes Pleasing, Sometimes Not”

In a fairytale, when you
think you’re out of the woods you’re not. I see a saw. Slide the hide. Go round
the merry.+++++++Path of needles, path
of pins.

I walked on knives to get here & now
my feet are maps. In case
I forget. How
I got here.

“A Wild Sweet Rippling”

A cautionary miss, cautionary
tale, all dressed up &
smelling of strangers, in the pines, in
the pines. He fondled her
anklebones, mistook her
hair entirely & caught, mid-
swarm, her shuttered face
bloomed.

He crowned her, poppies & pepper-
berry. Taught her to sleep
under trees, skirts spread to trap
mythical beasts.+++++++Waiting
for anything is its own kind
of fever. Or undoing. Or slow
road to ruin.

“Believe What I Tell”

She lives in a cave haunted
by the ghost of a giant
fox. She answers
questions in cryptic
verse & her answers
are always true:

Feathers, flowers,
sticks & stones. You can
grab my skin but
you’ll never get
my bones.

“She Made a Place to Sleep Inside My Ear”

The walls of the house have become
the world all around & everything
an excuse to do
nothing & she is fading
from the margins & we become
inconceivable to eachother.

Despite common appearance, our words
have roots in different sources. Exercises
in mis-reading. The way moths fly
like they’re broken.

Jenn McCreary’s new full-length collection, & now my feet are maps, is now available from Dusie Press. Other works include The Dark Mouth of Living (Horse Less Press), :ab ovo: (Dusie Press), a doctrine of signatures (Singing Horse Press), & Odyssey & Oracle (Least Weasel Press). worrywort, a collaboration with Pattie McCarthy, will be published by Little Red Leaves Textile Editions in 2014. She lives in Philadelphia with her family, where she co-edits ixnay press with Chris McCreary and was recently named a 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts for poetry.