hours inside out

By Isabella Preisz

In this visceral debut collection, Isabella Preisz recreates moments of adolescence, sexual exploration, shame, and disassociation through poems fragmented as a memory. She explores what it means to occupy a body, with the blend of past, present, and future remembrance maturing into a hard-won grace. Catching language on the boundary of formation, she exposes the process of healing as fluid as egg yolk — sticky, wet, and easily broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Not A Cult
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781945649417

Book preview

out

l’esprit de l’escalier

l’esprit de l’escalier

your dog was humping, humming history

the door was closing, holding humidity

your mouth was fizzing a faint fallacy

does she make you happy, viridity

your old home eating gray topiary

the paint drying for decayed misery

your car driving to the cemetery

we fight to fix nothing, history

two limp limbs stretching rubber, twisting shame

they are tangled spaghetti with red paint

they are broken tables with no frame

they are unfinished, half-awake restraint

to open your broken gate, to feel rain

to never feel clean, to say the wrong name

to hold the hand barricading my way

to turn yellow, to fuck for a game

this is the story i forgot to say

growing dark-green mildew during the day

winter red      night a crooked neck

petrichor

when the roads get slick

i still think about your fingers

sliding in the hole of my stockings

like reaching

through a chain-link fence

when the air is wet like this

your nose still leaves a trail

of goosebumps      down

my waist       leather

seats sticking to skin

notes written in margins

smudged

ink      rain trickling

down stucco

your bones      between my teeth

it’s been years

since i pulled scabs

from your throat

close this window

& say goodnight

we slept in the hallway

with sheets over our eyes    watching

lightning spread through veins

in the sky        fingers

through hair      inhaling morning

breath        kneading