francine j.

harris is the author of play dead and

allegiance. Recent work has appeared in Poetry,
PEN America, Literary Hub and the Academy of
American Poets. Her first collection, allegiance,
was a finalist for the 2013 Kate Tufts Discovery
and PEN Open Book Award. She has received a
fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Arts, is a Cave Canem poet, and is a Writer in
Residence at Washington University in St. Louis.

The body starts a wind when it gets broken into.

At night, when the leaves cant sleep / the black
bark is one eye open and the snap vine dozes with
its thorn in reach.
francine j. harris, from in

This book talks smack. This book chews with

its open mouth full of the juiciest words, the
most indigestible images. This book undoes
me...francine j. harris brilliantly ransacks the
poets toolkit, assembling art from buckets of
disaster and shreds of hope. Nothing she lays her
minds eye on escapes. You, too, will be captured
by her work.
Evie Shockley