Ceremony for the Choking Ghost: Poems by Karen Finneyfrock

By Karen Finneyfrock

After losing her sister to heart failure, Karen Finneyfrock was unable to write poems for three years. Her voice came back, whispering at first, then screaming. Ceremony for the Choking Ghost contains the sound of that voice returning, bringing poems about grief and its effect on the body, the body politic, memory and, of course, poems about love. From the intensely personal, “How My Family Grieved,†to the political, “What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t a Pillar of Salt),†Finneyfrock engages the reader with the chiseled images of a precise storyteller.

Finneyfrock writes poetry with muscular verve and narrative push. The depth and breadth suggested in just a few polished images placed next to each other will make you reconsider what poetry can do. -Paul Constant, editor The Stranger

If you've never enjoyed poetry once in your whole life-if even the word "poetry" makes you want to fall asleep, or die-you should read Karen Finneyfrock's new book of poetry, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost. -Paul Constant, editor The Stranger

...Finneyfrock's poems, then, are Shields's perfect novels: a shelf full of long, elaborate, heartfelt books that have been whittled down to their bare, sharp skeletons. -Paul Constant, editor “The Strangerâ€

• Language: English
• Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing
• Release date: Aug 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781935904809

Karen Finneyfrock

Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist, and teaching artist. She is a writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers-in-the-Schools program. In 2010, Karen traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State to perform and teach poetry and in 2011, she did a reading tour in Germany sponsored by the US Embassy. She has published two books of poetry and one young adult novel, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door.

Book preview

Title Page

Ceremony for the Choking Ghost

a collection of poetry

†

by Karen Finneyfrock

Write Bloody Publishing

America’s Independent Press

Long Beach, CA

writebloody.com

Copyright Information

Copyright © Karen Finneyfrock 2010

No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

Finneyfrock, Karen.

1st digital edition.

ISBN: 978-1-935904-80-9

Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes

Cover Designed by Joshua Grieve

Cover Art by Amanda Atkins

Interior Art by Brandon Lyon

Author Photo by Inti St. Clair

Proofread by Sarah Kay

Edited by Derrick Brown, shea M gauer, Saadia Byram, Michael Sarnowski

Special thanks to Lightning Bolt Donor, Weston Renoud

Printed in Tennessee, USA

Write Bloody Publishing

Long Beach, CA

Support Independent Presses

writebloody.com

To contact the author, send an email to [e-mail]

Dedication

This book is dedicated to organ donors.

Part One

Back Around

Spring

cut palm fronds

and snuck them

up my skirt while I was sleeping.

Now my dress makes shushing noises

when I walk. The hem creeps from knee

to handful of thigh and hangs there,

a cotton lip, green fingers of the leaf

pointing down. Do your worst.

I’m not afraid of your clicking teeth

on the sidewalk. I know spring is hard

to keep quiet. I have melted ice into my

wrist to keep from talking to the wrong

kind of men, pants rolled to mid-calves,

feet slid into sandals like leather-tongue

dragons. Street vendors sell pickles.

I eat them wearing sunglasses.

These days, my body is always

a carousel animal. I’ll be the

flamingo. You,

the horse.

What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said

(If She Wasn’t a Pillar of Salt)

Do you remember when we met

in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,

and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing

you, when we were young, and blushed with youth

like bruised fruit. Did we care then

what our neighbors did

in the dark?

When our first daughter was born

on the River Jordan, when our second

cracked her pink head from my body

like a promise, did we worry

what our friends might be

doing with their tongues?

What new crevices they

Reviews for Ceremony for the Choking Ghost

[maxairborne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book!!

[catfantastic_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this collection of poetry by Karen Finneyfrock. Electric imagery, passion and death. Wow. What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn't a Pillar of Salt) is the poem I've always wanted to write but never had the guts. Plus Finneyfrock does it so much better than I would have, anyways. So much imagery and horror! As much I would love to quote the whole poem, I'll just include these two great lines:"... any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighborsare punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god." (p.16)The Newer Colossus is an equally scathing indictment of present American immigration policy, told from the point of view of the Statue of Liberty as she reflects on her famous motto, "Give me your tired, your poor...""Give me your merchandise, I should say. Give me yourcoffee beans. Give me yourbananas and avocados, give me your rice. We turn ourfarmland into strip malls, giveme things to sell at my strip malls." (p.23)According to the back copy, the author lost her sister and several of the poems in the collection detail the grief and heart ache that she and her family went through. This is a beautiful, bittersweet collection.

[andreablythe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Apparently Karen Finneyfrock fell into a deep poetic depression following the death of her sister and found herself unable to write poetry. When, three years later, she was finally able to come back to writing, these are the poems she wrote. Ceremony for the Choking Ghost plays out like a poetic carnival. The people, images, and metaphors parade through this book in delightful arrays of artifice and splendor. And yet, despite the glitter and sparkle and beauty, there is too, something deeply sad and unsettling, something seedy beneath the surface. After the thrills of reading this book, I am only sad that her first collection, Welcome to the Butterfly House, is out of print, so I will not be able to immediately read more of her work.