The Haptic Cold

Lily Brown

POETRY  |  $10 $8

November 2013
Read an excerpt

HOUSE HOME

If something outside the mind
makes the mind—

I’d rather a ceiling wet with river,
the elemental basement,
cement’s slick grit.

Up on the gusty terrace,
experimental glass takes yellow

light down into
its purple middle and
fits it in cellar grey.

At the bottom stair,
I play the alchemical fan

and its pedals
wing the composite up.

A kind of descriptive internal monologue akin to a series of perfect silences.

Rob McLennan

Taking the body as a site of deep-seated physical and emotional responses, the poems in The Haptic Cold enact shifts in habitual relationships between the body and all it encounters. These poems explore transformation and stasis, connection and separation, revealing how perception provides us the opportunity to experience the world from multiple perspectives at once.

About the Author

Lily Brown was born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of the full-length collection of poetry, Rust or Go Missing (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011). Her poems have appeared in publications including American Letters and Commentary, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Fence, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and elsewhere.

Publication Details

Chapbook
Hand-bound. 32 pp, 4.5 x 8.75 in
Publication Date: November 01 2013
Distribution: Direct Only