Wren Hanks

gar child tells it in first-person

I went looking for my life

in the woods like a bloodhound

you don’t know what it is to have a story

wrapped around you     so tight

not a collar, not a chain

shimmering in the morning

but a ribbon cutting into

your waist  mine’s on my wrist

right where the veins meet

like a ghost’s anesthetic fingers

around me in the night

you’re a doll sopping in the river

but the story’s a bracelet

you can’t slip off your wrist

like a bloodhound

you smell your own life  green like a field

that’s bleaching every day

TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE WITH BREAD BASKET AND CHERRY SPIT

(click to read)

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Wren Hanks is the author of two forthcoming chapbooks, Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet (Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. His work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean, Menacing Hedge, Muzzle, [PANK], and Word Riot, among other journals. He is an assistant editor for Sundress Publications and an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans. He is slowly amassing a sleeve of freshwater fish on his right arm (so far: two zebrafish and a discus) and tweets at @corsetofscales.