Christina Cooke pulls from a well of gender, identity, and sexuality, peppers it with a hint of Jamaican rhythm and language, and presents it to us in this chapbook. She coaxes words together in love-lust, examines the gaze, and brings us into the place of a woman-body walking over hot asphalt, the rain on her skin, and the taste of mango jam on her tongue. She does not shy away from the internal voice, self-doubt, or the anxious churning of a wanton body. (Porkbelly Press, 2014) // available from our shop
Excerpt
her, me
her hair
falls against my chest
cowlicks curling up
beckoning,
“come.”
reaching along her cheek, her neck
catching loose strands
as she cupsflattenscradles
palming my breasts.
fingers to warm skin
with both hands i hold her
just hold
her
swells of skin curving
not pale, flat
she exhales
makes space between her knees.
About the Poet:
Currently based on the occupied and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples (Vancouver, Canada), Christina Cooke’s prose appeared in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society (CA) and Sou’wester (US); her creative nonfiction and poetry appeared in HYSTERIA: A Collection of Feminisms (UK); her poetry is forthcoming from Matrix Magazine (CA). She is also an editorial collective member of the feminist literary journal Room Magazine (CA). To learn more about her writerly endeavours, follow her on Twitter, @cjctlc, or her blog.
Cover
The cover features a three-color serigraph of hand lettering and a Red-billed Streamertail hummingbird (the national bird of Jamaica). The belly & title ink is an iridescent mix, as you can see from the variation in the photo. This book is available on teal and also grey cover stock. Each issue of the 55 cover run is sewn by hand.
Printmaker: Nicci Mechler
Want to see more of the process of printing the cover for l’appel du vide? Check out Nicci’s blog.
Porkbelly Press 