About the Author: Shannon Sankey’s We Ran Rapturous is a 2019 winner of the The Atlas Review Chapbook Series. Sankey is the recipient of a 2017 Academy of American Poets University & College Prize and a 2019 SAFTA residency. She attended Pittsburgh CAPA for Literary Arts, served as a Green Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, and holds an MFA from Chatham University, where she was the Margaret L. Whitford Fellow. She is the founder of Stranded Oak Press, a chapbook press for Pittsburgh poets.
Don’t miss out: A public release party and reading will be held on Saturday, September 21 at 7 p.m., Left Field Meeting Space (116 Federal Street, Floor 4), to feature poets Judith Vollmer, Kim Sousa, Luke McDermott, and others. Local artist Meghan Tutolo will have art and gifts for sale.
“As if arrived from a far world where deep wisdom resides, We Ran Rapturous mesmerizes and intoxicates.” — Judith Vollmer, author of The Apollonia Poems and The Water Books
“Shannon Sankey’s We Ran Rapturous is an exceptional lyric achievement [….] To invert the warning of Yeats, a beautiful terror is born here.” — Natalie Eilbert, author of Indictus
Typographic Note: In book form, the below poems are fully justified.
HAIR
A tree will catch a snapped twig in the fork
of a healthy branch, god forbid it reach the
earth. The twig will balance there for
seasons. It is the same with me, in the
shower, with—what unit? a handful?—a
violence of curls, several ounces of dull
hair in my fists (horror of lifting one’s own
limb, horror of autonomous weight). I do a
terrible math: what fraction of the whole?
A strand on the tweed coat of a lover is
romantic. I am not talking about that, nor
the common imposition of a choked drain.
I am telling you about the tree that collects
its ejected parts, the tree that postures for
passersby a crooked kind of flowering.
BATH
A great performance begins. Pluck of pipe, rush of spigot. Hard churn. She lowers herself down, what is easy. For minutes, nothing. No sound for this relief, muscles interrupted in conversation, spine a buoyant branch. She must float. Then, the atonal play of raised elbow and plunged knee: streams flooding and drying up. My redfoot mother continent. Soft wash of soap between her breasts, bump of sore bottom on ceramic. Blow and beat of her dozen bottles. What it takes. Sugar scrubs to abrade the sores on her soles, ceramides to heal. Ointment for the blisters on her palms, palms an oily pool to bless her face. It breaks and chimes through her fingers. My poor tablet, she makes the water sweet. She takes her foot in hand. An emery board to grind the heel, to wear it down. To make mother-soup: suck and choke of drain, again, she fills the city wells.
WE RAN RAPTUROUS
In those days, we could not afford a
couch. We sat on wooden chairs till
our asses were sore, then we moved
to the floor and made extraordinary
shapes. When we found two
recliners on the street, we rocked and
spun ecstatic. We kissed our knees,
knees waxy as apples, four apples
just for us. When the discount futon
came in the mail, we threw ourselves
down. We ate fifty-cent cupcakes off
the cushions, our curls bathed in
static. We lay our black footprints up
the walls. We danced until the good
light. We ran rapturous from the
ache, ache, ache of no soft place.
Excerpted from We Ran Rapturous by Shannon Sankey. This excerpt is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without their permission.
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