Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry

Leia Penina Wilson

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780268106195
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Poetry
• Index: Literature

The wildly unrestrained poems in Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson's second collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, pose an increasingly desperate question about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls are shaped by the world, as well as the role myth plays in this coming of age quest. Wilson, an afakasi Samoan poet, divides the book into three sections, linking the poems in each section by titles. In this way the poems act as a continuous song, an ode, or a lament revivifying a narrative that refuses to adopt a storyline.

Samoan myths and Western stories punctuate this volume in a search to reconcile identity and education. The lyrical declaration is at once an admiration of love and self-loathing. She kills herself. Resurrects herself. Kills herself again. She is also killed by the world. Resurrected. Killed again. These poems map displacement, discontent, and an increasing suspicion of the world itself, or the ways people learn the world. Drawing on the work of Bhanu Kapil, Anne Waldman, Alice Notley, and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Wilson's poems reveal familiarity and strangeness, invocation and accusation. Both ritual and ruination, the poems return again and again to desire, myth, the sacred, and body

AM I THE WORLD OR THE GURL

the world is always burning always burning the gurl always dies always dies am

i the world or the gurl always burning always dying

WE CRAVE THE WORLD THE GURL WE CARVE I

bury a doll in the shape of myself

i unlife themover and over

againagain homer’s child

plato’s childthose forms

foregrounding another’s authority

orpheus’ head floats off body

off coursei give up

understandingo mother

receive this prayer—happy cannibalism!

i too fear the heavensi shear

a lock of my hairi unutter

godi fall before you now

a shield

i dig her uptear her body apart

get at the good meatredmeat

marrowmeatheartmeatwomb

i eat& unmourn

my tongue

hurts into itmanyheaded

manypetaledmany

mistakesmade to say

epic is a wild thing.

WE CARVE TENDERNESS

she comes too near & feeds from the bodies

into shapes is shaped now her

christmas tree violence ginger man violence reindeer violence

did you know reindeer could be violent all that merry

snow everywhere snow that unwarm moisture the shyness

start fluffing it this prison is very old and prisoning

bee remover pigeon control pink wallpaper with horses and maids—

o it’s rowdy so very rowdy

& yet did you know me hands—

i went the fork’d way you showed

my mouthspat its gravel & yet

when i killed my father i frightened

youi had only models of ripping

off your clothes & i couldn’t

i will not be noisy when you want me to be still i will be glad—

everything lays its corpse but i will not

die i will not repent.

WE CARVE WITHOUT NICETIES HISTORICAL ACCURACY

each man’s end is all the cunt for himself.

i lay an iris for each of us who in poverty walks behind eurydice.

combat of beauty and pleasure. probably i won’t she says

we were each other’s vicious education.we learned so much

we ruined.they built monuments to our broken

bones said even our english was broke

a shape of a monster a woman some mal formed skin over

bones over skin over bones

plenty of fatfatthe shape of make it out alive make it out alive.

—do we ever

don’t be that bitch just behead your lover that learning.

there is a wraith in the birth trees watch out—

i ask the prophet the seer who dreams for dreams too

permit me death too.

i cut my own throat close my own wound wear my own

nightdescended blood.i will seek aide from my own

enemies if there are friends here hide your eyes.

WE CARVE FROM WHAT WE KNOW THE REAL LESSON BELIEVE

nothing.sacrifice everything

believe innothing

be nothinghow

did you get away with that for so long—we wish

on a shooting starcombine our powersi do not

want to be lonelyyour slick

afterbirthfailed body of

hectorprophetic womanheadhead of

whatever you kill & carry around

this killing your stilled-lifethis battle again

again is tiresomeall these old white men

and their same feelings—moon chalice! i want!

to be stronghow will you answer lover! c...

Table of contents

• Half Title
• The Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Am i the World or the Gurl
• I Appear Seeking Revenge for the Destruction of those Children
• You must Always Feed from the Bodies
• End Notes & Debts (of Love)