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Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall is the author of Saudade (Copper Canyon, 2017), Our Lady of the Ruins (Norton, 2012), and Rookery (Southern Illinois, 2010). Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, Poetry, the Believer, the New Republic, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s an associate professor of creative writing at Kansas State University.

Author

Dearest Eros,

Summer 2018 | Poetry

I did this to myself, I know. You are not mine
but come as wind clotted with the end of a season. 
Did you know all a ginkgo’s leaves fall on the same day? 
Sometimes it’s called maiden hair. For its beauty. 

Dear Eros,

Summer 2018 | Poetry

I have found you where I shouldn’t—in the wrong bodies, 
at the wrong time, and once on a subway platform 
with my feet stuck to a pool of dried soda taking gum 
from a near-stranger’s mouth. That night you were spearmint 
and the 6 train. I have been woken by you, put to bed by you. 

Sphinx

Summer 2018 | Poetry

The last time I left your house I saw a moth 
on the black skin of a puddle, ruining herself 
on the moon’s reflection. Dear sphinx hawkmoth 

The Hunger River

Summer 2012 | Poetry

It was named long before a man shot his horse for trying to follow him, but that’s all anyone remembers— not the trees undisturbed by mosquitoes or macaws, not the useless clarity of the water. Instead they recall the rubber baron who went ma [...]

The Lazarus Collector

Spring 2012 | Poetry

It wasn’t until I went to the leper colony to buy their coins that anyone knew about the poem carved in the tree. Each minted dime in my country touches hundreds of piggy banks, collection plates, lemonade stands in summer. Every bill replaces a [...]