This Hard Business of Living. A collection of centos by Patrice Boyer Claeys & Gail Goepfert, selected by Ron Mohring as Number One in Volume Nine of our Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series.

Release date:  October 30, 2021 [49 copies]
33 pages
$ 9.00

Cover image: antique quilting cotton, double pink, ca. 1890. 

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Patrice Boyer Claeys is the author of The Machinery of Grace (2020), Honey from the Sun (with Gail Goepfert, 2020), and Lovely Daughter of the Shattering (2019). Recent journal publications include Zone 3, Glassworks, Literary Mama, Pirene’s Fountain and Aeolian Harp Anthology. Find her online at patriceboyerclaeys.com. 

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Gail Goepfert, an associate editor at RHINO Poetry, is the  author of five books—A Mind on Pain (Finishing Line Press), Tapping Roots (Kelsay Books), Get Up Said the World (Červená Barva Press), Honey from the Sun (with Patrice Claeys, blurb.com), and Self-Portrait with Thorns (Glass Lyre Press). Recent publications include Journal of Compressed Arts, Bluestem, Rogue Agent, and Beloit Poetry Journal. More at gailgoepfert.com.

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Our Breath–

a cloud that followed an earthly map.

We whisper darkness to each other
and how reckless it is
to touch strangers.

These are the times
you must make your own map
to this unraveling.

We keep our drifts of space
where a fine dust is ticking.
And what’s ahead we’ve never seen,

a solitude made more intense
as the moment stretches thinner and thinner
vibrates between life and death.

There is no withstanding the aura or power of the Wild.

cento sources: Paul Celan, Simon Armitage, Vivian Smith, Matthew Dickman, Fady Joudah, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Joy Harjo, Bruce Weigl, Dara Wier, Mary Jo Salter, Luis Cernuda, John Greenleaf   Whittier, Deborah Nodler Rosen, Primus St. John, Anonymous (Gilgamesh)

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Limited edition: only 24 copies available. Order yours here!