Insomnia in Another Town

By Lisa M. Hase-Jackson

From the opening poem of Lisa Hase-Jackson's impactful collection, Insomnia in Another Town, we learn that "There is no small grief...all are interconnected." These poems, cloaked in memory and the unmaking and re-making of family, travel us through the harvest of a poet's life. Like the farms she made grow, this book tills the soil of a human soul and all the many experiences that make it. In pantoums, free verse, and prose poems, Hase-Jackson demonstrates the way that every lived experience weaves into a root system that bears unique fruit, singular as our heartbeats, our winding fingerprints.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clemson University Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781638041443

Book preview

black and white cover with a tree in the center

Insomnia in Another Town

Lisa M. Hase-Jackson

As a partnership between Clemson University Press and the Converse College Low-Residency MFA program, this series publishes poetry collections, short-story collections, and creative nonfiction.

Titles in the series

Ice on a Hot Stove, edited by Denise Duhamel and Rick Mulkey

89% by Sarah Cooper

crossing over by Kim Shegog

Insomnia in Another Town

Lisa M. Hase-Jackson

© Lisa M. Hase-Jackson, 2023

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-63804-144-3

Cover design by Lindsay Jackson

Cover image by Linda Briskin

Typeset in Minion Pro by Gloria J. Aragon

For information about Clemson University Press, please visit our website at www.clemson.edu/press.

Contents

One Saturday in March

I

She Flies With Her Own Wings

Umbrella Man

Nocturne I

Nocturne II

Nocturne III

Bridge

Washington Street

Winter, Independence

Latchkey

Her Own Girl

Coal Street Magi

After the Ban

Meep and Mope

What Brought You Here

Per Aspera

I Dig Rocking Around with You

Planting Season

Preservation

Way Out

Bouts Rimé

Land of the Southwind

II

Early Release

Residential Mobility

Squall

Maple

Terminal

Portraiture

Dead Birds of the Great Leap Forward

Spoleto Aubade

Just

Ode to Quick Trip

III

You find yourself in Kansas City

Visitation

Yield

So Much Depends on a Brown Wicker Basket

Finding Mom

Backyard Chickens

Prepared in Mind

Catch and Release

I only believe in God on good days

Matthew Prompts Evacuation

Flag and Signal

Vespers

Quarterly Screening

Owls at Midday

Refrain

Notes

Acknowledgements

One Saturday in March

Gary researches chicken psychology

after finding a patch of gold feathers

scattered in the backyard

and we realize that Buttercup is gone.

He wants to know if the other

three hens will miss her, if they are

traumatized by her attack

and sudden disappearance.

The barred owl that had been

visiting the bird bath for the last

week, conspicuously quiet,

apparently gaining from our loss.

Living on the farm, I used to fish

the creek bordering my land, slipping

sinkers on the line to keep

it taut and tense, which is how I feel now.

One little chicken shouldn’t cause

this much sorrow, Gary

says, but there is no small grief,

I say. All are interconnected;

one touch sends tremors

through our core

like the fly in the web

that wakes the spider at its center.

It’s