Laurie Kutchins | Sketches for a Dead Renaissance

Sketches for a Dead Renaissance: poems by Laurie Kutchins. Number 3 in Volume Thirteen of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Series.

[ cover: Victorian wallpaper, Jeffrey & Company, London, 1878 ]

Publication:  September 29, 2025
Limited edition – only 49 copies
25 pages
$ 12.00

Laurie Kutchins is a poet and lyric nonfiction writer. Her poems and essays have appeared widely in publications such as Belleview  Literary Review, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and in several anthologies. Her first book of poetry, Between Towns, won the first-book award from Texas Tech University Press, and two subsequent books, The Night Path (Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) and Slope of the Child Everlasting, are published by BOA Editions.

Lucca Wall

The wish was to be forgotten.
When I was keeping in touch with the wall – my ancestors
tapped my shoulders. I heard the stone say you built this wall. 
There has been no war for five-hundred years.
A paradox is a wall to let us in, not keep us out. 
The wall is like the river that belongs to us.
Willows and poplars growing on the banks.
We are history.
Inside our blood is DNA that belongs to a minotaur.
Inside our blood is a labyrinth.
A paradox is a wall that makes love not war.
You have no idea how many babies come from this wall.
I hope you enter with love – its transversal message.