Full Description
Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry
Wolves in Shells is a modern monomyth telling the story of a woman navigating homelessness, trauma, and memories as she attempts to leave a violent partner. Reflecting on her familial heritage, this survivor grapples with the way she, the women of her history, and her daughter have been conditioned to accommodate the demands of the male ego and predation. Reflective, clear-eyed, and incisive, the poems of Wolves in Shells feature O-Six, a wolf born into the rewilding territory of Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s who serves as a metaphor for women who must cope with violence and survive on their own. Drawing from Gaston Bachelard's quote "wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones," the narrative considers how survival requires a balance of protectiveness, risk, trust, and escape.
Contents
The Howl
Says the Mollusk
I Wanted to Be a Boy
When Anxious, They Tell Us to Make Our World Smaller
Old Shell
Wolf Story
My Mother Wears a Bikini at South Haven Beach
A Pedagogy for Lesser Bodies
How to Do Subtraction
Taxonomy
Elegy for Charley
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
Two Wolves
Everything's Fine
Open Mic
Steven Turnball
After Leaving
I Don't Tell My Daughter I Wrote Another Wolf Poem
Among Fingernail Clams
Protections
At the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
A Patch of Blue
Luxuries
On the Ishnala Trail
Dad
For Practical Purposes
Because Memory, I Am Told, Is Unreliable-
Irregular Patterns of Endangered Migrations
Mountain Story
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
The Unusual Art of Living Well
How to Forgive the Predator
After I Tell a Man I Can't Date Him Because of My Hidden Disability
Hunter's Moon
Nocturne
Gestation
America
Borders
Unpacking
Preacher's Daughter
My Daughter and I Gather Stones at Empire Beach
At the Butterfly Habitat
First Visit to the Sister Survivors Exhibit
Spirit of the Animal
Upon Viewing KatrÍn SigurdardÓttir's Metamorphic
At a Monastic Retreat
The Hunter
The Book of Birds
After My Father Tells Me He Loves the 23rd Psalm
Field Note on Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
My Grandmother's Ashes
The World Is Whatever We Choose to Make It
Elegy for My Daughter Who Has Never Known a Paradise
Civil Assault
This Much
Root
They Tell Us to Live in the Moment Because the Moment Is All We May Have
Smile Back
Acknowledgments
Notes
