Swallow

by Jendi Reiter

From the Foreword by Editor Cindy M. This is a map. This is a topographical map, a phrenology map, an anatomical map. It is a map of the town in which I grew up. It is a map that traces familiar streets, and on it are scars and gouges and holes left over from pushpins, marking out the places where people I have known my whole life lived and died. It is a strange map, and it keeps folding in on itself again and again. It is a heavy map heavy with the heft of experience, the weight of secrets. It s a cool, clean map, and if you look at it the right way, you might see a young girl, hair blowing in her face, taking a cool, clean sunbath under a sky [that] has no furniture in it. This is her map. It shows her the way to the small things - the things she does not speak of, the things she dares not say aloud. This map is her shelter. It manipulates her perception. It restores her faith, helps her forgive, to know her own body and mind; it reminds.
Ginsberg had a map like this one. Brautigan, too, and Anne Sexton, and all of those poets whispering out from behind the ink with which this map is printed. Out from behind the parchment, from behind the legend, from behind the scale, there are those who impart the wisdom. Jendi Reiter has drawn us a map, and it comes from places we have all been. These poems speak loud, and they speak from the inside. Just listen.

34 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2009

About the author

Author of the novel "Two Natures" (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the poetry collections "Bullies in Love" (Little Red Tree, 2015), "A Talent for Sadness" (Turning Point, 2003), and several chapbooks. Award-winning short stories published in Iowa Review, Bayou, OSA Enizagam, and others. 2010 Poetry Fellowship from Massachusetts Cultural Council. Working on novel series about gay men's spiritual journeys.