Soft Inheritance

By Fawn Parker

In her exceptional poetic debut, Fawn Parker meditates on grief, illness, and the open-handed relationship between material objects and memory. Written after her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Soft Inheritance follows the poet's rapidly evolving reality where "kindness is a scar," though "not all scar-makers are kind." Both a treatise on the sick body and the state of "after"—post-caretaking, post-breakup, post-moving, and post-death—these poems question what is inherited, and ask what can safely be left behind. A diamond ring? A cancerous gene? Soft Inheritance is a finely crafted love letter to the people and places that imprint on a life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palimpsest Press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781990293535

Fawn Parker

Fawn Parker is a Giller-nominated author of five books including the forthcoming Hi, it's me (McClelland & Stewart 2024). Her story "Feed Machine" was nominated for the 2020 McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and her story "Wunderhorse II" was anthologized in André Forget's After Realism (Véhicule, 2022). Fawn is a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick and her work is represented by Ron Eckel at CookeMcDermid Agency.

Book preview

Cover: Soft Inheritance by Fawn Parker.

Soft Inheritance

Soft Inheritance

Fawn Parker

Logo: Palimpsest Press. Logo: Anstruther Books.

Copyright © Fawn Parker 2023

All rights reserved

Palimpsest Press

1171 Eastlawn Ave.

Windsor, Ontario. N8S 3J1

www.palimpsestpress.ca

Printed and bound in Canada

Cover design and book typography by Ellie Hastings

Edited by Jim Johnstone

Palimpsest Press would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We also acknowledge the assistance of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Logo: Anstruther Books. Logo: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts du Canada. Logo: Ontario Arts Council Conseil Des Arts De L'Ontario, an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l'Ontario. Logo: Ontario Creates/Ontario Creatif. Logo: Canada

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

title: Soft inheritance / Fawn Parker.

names: Parker, Fawn, 1994- author.

description: Poems.

identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2023048896X

Canadiana (ebook) 20230488978

isbn 9781990293528 (softcover)

isbn 9781990293535 (epub)

classification: lcc ps8631.a7535 s64 2023 | ddc c811/.6—dc23

For E.

Contents

1

Gavage

Fasting for God

The Morning After Roky Played Lee’s

Poem Against My Husband

Abracadabra

Animal of Choice

Jolie-Laide

Bait Age

Soft Inheritance

Impact

Triple Negative

Found Poem B Side

St. Agatha’s Platter

What Are We Here For

2

Golden Rays of Chemo

Strawberry Thief

Distance

Range Life

All My Fragile Herbs

Going Shopping

Like to Make Spring

Smug as Venus

Surname, Name

Ghost

3

The Grand Inquisitorium

That Famous Night

Their Shells Get Bleahed By the Sun

Nicolas Laloux, Magnetic Hill, Belgian Moon, Moosehead

1986, the Fields Company of Chicago

In the Documentary About the Entire World

Le Swan Diner Café

Exercise in Deflection

And So I Do

We Were On The St. Croix

Goodbye to New York

4

Woof

Hoping

Asshole

Bluff Charge

Horseman’s First Rodeo

Sicklebill Abandons

Thursday

Thursday, Again

A Cover Over Everything

Acknowledgements

About the Author

1

Gavage

First I replaced the head, then the handle,

then it was not my grandfather’s axe.

I used the blade to shave the soft down

and my wrist flicked: a familial trick.

I wrapped a