On the Subject of Blackberries

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Welcome to the garden. Here we poison our fruits pierce ourselves with thorns and transform under the light of the full moon. Mad and unhinged we fall through rabbit holes walk willingly into fairy rings and dance in the song of witchcraft two snakes around our ankles the juice of berries on our tongues.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Inspired by Shirley Jackson's </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> these poems are meditations on female rage postpartum depression compulsion and intrusive thoughts. They pull from periods of sleep deprivation soul exhaustion and nightmarish delusions and each is left untitled a nod to the stream-of-conscious mind of a new mother.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Using found poetry and under the influence of bibliomancy Wytovich harnesses the occult power of her imagery and words and aligns it with a new more vulnerable darkness. These pieces are not only visions of the madwoman in the attic but ghostly visitations that explore the raw mental torture women sometimes experience after giving birth.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>This collection heals as much as it scars and is an honest look at how trauma seeps into the soil of our bodies. Her poems are imagined horrors fictional fears and all the unspoken murmurs of a mind lost between reality and dream. What she leaves in her wake is nothing short of horror-the children lost the garden dead the women feral ready to pounce.</span></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Advance Praise</strong></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>...an uncomfortable collection. Petal-pressed and pulsing with politeness her poetry is unflinching in its honesty each poem a bewitchingly beautiful slurp at the horror of motherhood. A devastating work. -Lee Murray co-author of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Tortured Willows</em></p><p><br></p><p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>...</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>a birth announcement a lullaby a eulogy. It is the beautiful yet painful tangled parts of transformation. Wytovich conjures a sympathetic magic spell and stands firm as one of the masters of speculative poetry. -Cynthia Pelayo </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Crime Scene</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Dark lovely and brutal these poems are a tribute to Shirley Jackson and a hymn for the inner Blackwood sister who resides in all of us. Fans of gothic horror will devour Wytovich's stunning collection in one sitting.-Jessica Drake-Thomas </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Burials </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>and</span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> Bad Omens</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Once again Stephanie M. Wytovich knocks it out of the park with her inimitable poetry. Everything I'd hoped it would be and more. -Gwendolyn Kiste </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Reluctant Immortals</em></p>