A Sampling of Poetry, Fiction, & CNF from Porkbelly Press

These are our most delicious offerings with hand-screened covers (left to right):

Sugared Water (lit mag, various authors & poets) | $10

l’appel du vide (Christina Cooke) | $10

Skeleton Keys (Laura Garrison) | $10

Vein of Stone (Sarah McCartt-Jackson) | $10

Bodies in Water (P. Andrew Miller) | $10

We’ll be tabling at Imaginarium (Louisville) in September, and we’re offering a limited number of these sets this month: all five of these titles for $38. The press is raising a little cash to pay for travel & table & stay. You can also use a $5 off coupon code IMAGINE on any order over $30 (on chapbooks, gift subscriptions, or even sketchbooks & journals).

Skeleton Keys by Laura Garrison

Skeleton Keys (Laura Garrison) is a chapbook of poetry that combines a bit of night-circus magic with recollections from childhood. There’s a lovely energy in these poems, and a definite sense of wonder in discovery. Things are lost in tall grasses and found in the light of a sunset behind a hill. Slip into a fairy tale held together with spun sugar and shadows.

In this chapbook, you’ll find free verse and a few gems of modern American haiku. | via Wicked Little Heart at Etsy.

Pulled by hand (screen prints), these covers are printed in 2 colors on 65# stock (the kraft brown is 100% recycled, 20% PCW). The special edition release is limited to 55 hand-numbered, handsewn in candy-pink thread, with various end papers, including vellum. In keeping with many delights offered in a carnival setting, there are three cover colors available in the run: purple, kraft brown, and blue. Since these are hand-pulled prints, no two are exactly alike.

Excerpt from “Sylvania:”

Enchanted, I leave the circle
of campers in their soft cocoons
and wade barefoot into the night.

When I am discovered early
the next morning in a small cave
in a pile of sleeping foxes,
I open my mouth to explain
(why is there fur stuck in my teeth?)
but find that I can only growl.

Excerpt from “Sacrifice:”

Our teacher brought a god to class
for show-and-tell. His glass temple
rested squarely on the bookcase,
below a window streaked with rain.

That afternoon, the sun emerged
and spun his scales to liquid gold.
I watched his tongue dart in and out
and longed for him to notice me.

About the Poet:

Laura Garrison is creeping slowly southward like an unstoppable fungus that subsists on caffeine and gummy bears. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in various print and online literary magazines. Her hobbies include skulking under bridges, freeing horrors chained in castle dungeons, and wandering through moonlit cemeteries in her best nightgown.