Not enough to get crucified. You’ve got to be covered with red spots like an anti-vaxxer’s kid’s measles. Blood everywhere. Like when you clipped the cat’s claw too close. A trail across the white comforter. Floor. Expensive white rug. Little fur-lined igloo where it hid, then ran across the rug again. The woodcut was meant “to shock the beholder into repentance.” That spear—stuck through his neck? –There’s a whip, too. You’ve got to flagellate yourself repeatedly. It’s your fault. About the cat and the entire marriage. God, at least, forgives you. As long as you remain really bloody miserable.
For more, read our interview with Kim Addonizio and find out why she likes to write with constraints.
Kim Addonizio is the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, two Pushcart Prizes, and was a National Book Award Finalist for her collection Tell Me. Her latest books are Mortal Trash: Poems (W.W. Norton) and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress (Penguin). She recently collaborated on a chapbook, The Night Could Go in Either Direction (Slapering Hol) with poet Brittany Perham. Addonizio also has two word/music CDs: Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing (with Susan Browne) and My Black Angel, a companion to My Black Angel: Blues Poems & Portraits, featuring woodcuts by Charles D. Jones.
Photo Credit: Carrie Cizauskas
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