Vievee Francis

Biography

Vievee Francis is the author of Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State, 2006), Horse in the Dark (Northwestern, 2012) and Forest Primeval (Northwestern, 2015), winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry. She is an associate professor at Dartmouth College and an associate editor for Callaloo. 

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2019

Goat

By Vievee Francis


Capricorn, hair, bray, and hoof, eater of tin, biter,
bitter, sister, wilder than tame, not quite
gamey as deer, lower cousin to the caribou,
giving rise to tears and the satyr.

POETRY / Summer 2019

On the Piney Woods, Death, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Me

By Vievee Francis


Sometimes I wander around wondering
where my mother is. The family buried
her next to her own mother. Out there,
the hard pines darken early. Anyone
can hide and not be found for years.
Bobby Cherry laid low there. The girls came
in his dreams...

POETRY / Summer 2019

The Shore

By Vievee Francis


In a nondescript hotel in East Texas, I fell
in love with a couple. There in the dim

hallway with rugs that were clean enough
but darkly patterned to hide the stains so who knows,

her back was against the wall, her arms up and around
his neck...