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    Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple
    Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple
    Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple
    Ebook54 pages21 minutes

    Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple

    By Laura Kiesel

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    About this ebook

    Laura Kiesel plumbs the depths of familial dysfunction, and the wretched inheritance of addiction, thoroughly and with impressive nuance in "Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple," combining integrity and personal grit that’s interwoven throughout her lyrical style. She writes beautifully about her fractured relationship with her mother, and the ripple effect it has had throughout the rest of her life. Her work is an unflinching examination of the erotic implications of romantic relationships and filled with visually exhilarating metaphors and analogies.

    Raised a Roman Catholic, Kiesel describes religious rituals and makes use of Christian symbols, while referencing Biblical figures and stories, in ways that are simultaneously subversive and familiar. Illness and death are common themes in her work, whom Kiesel often personifies and treats as old friends--more accurately, rivals or frenemies--competing for her time and attention and that of her loved ones. Instead of keeping them at arm’s length, Kiesel embraces them and the macabre reminders her daily life offers her of her own and others’ shared mortality and finiteness. "Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple" does not demur in its assessment of the self and society but instead navigates the trials and tribulations of the human condition with visceral astuteness.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUnsolicited Press
    Release dateJan 12, 2021
    ISBN9781005810160
    Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple

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      Book preview

      Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple - Laura Kiesel

      Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple

      Copyright © 2021 Laura Kiesel

      All Rights Reserved.

      First Edition, 2021.

      Published by Unsolicited Press.

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      Unsolicited Press

      Portland, Oregon

      www.unsolicitedpress.com

      orders@unsolicitedpress.com

      619-354-8005

      Cover Design: Kathryn Gerhardt

      Editor: S.R. Stewart

      Acknowledgements

      I would like to thank the following journals for their publication of my individual poems:

      Upstreet and Blue Lake Review: Stem

      Medulla Review: RED and Rhythmless

      Fox Chase Review: Hair

      Amethyst Arsenic: Clam Poem and Conversation with my Pen

      Ibbetson Street: Wish for an Aspiring Herpetologist

      Noctua Review: Music

      Stone Highway Review: October and Fever Dreams

      Naugatuck River Review: What Tea Can’t Cure

      Wilderness House Literary Review: A Poem for Uncle, Nature, and The Mercy of Eyelids

      Gin Bender: For My Mother and Devils

      Poems

      Acknowledgements

      Poems

      Rhythmless

      Fever Dreams

      Devils

      Conversation with My Pen

      RED

      Clam Poem

      Nature

      For My Mother

      October

      Ghosts

      Hair

      Rust

      Wish for an Aspiring Herpetologist

      A Poem for Uncle

      What Tea Can’t Cure

      The Mercy of Eyelids

      Some Nights

      Primitive

      Stem

      Music

      About the Author

      About the Press

      Rhythmless

      She goes chained to the tremor of a rhythm that never arrives.

      —Frederico García Lorca (The Passage of the Siguiriya) 

      We have considered want, to be in its bondage.

      But to rhythm is another thing. 

      I’ve imagined feet soles shoe-laced with cymbals, a mouth smiling

      piano-key teeth.

      Violin-stringed sinews.

      The skies stretched out with sheet music, with music symbols floating

      around like snowflakes adrift, to

      reach past the town limits to where the city turns gritty and the ground is

      strewn with syringes. 

      Morning

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