tori grant welhouse

STASHED commemorates a daughter’s last year at home, before college, summer jobs, and first apartments. A bittersweet time of hope and promise.

Each week, a short “lesson” poem is stashed inside daughter’s lunch, next to the pear and animal crackers.

Example Poem

Solitude

You give yourself room,
susceptible to plushness, very fine hairs.
You're not wrong, not right,
benign as a window, cool, glass pane,
relishing flatness, passivity.

You sit bowl, slurp yourself,
a satiation of hunger, thirst, peace.
You might hold a teacup, fingering
the glaze of it between your blessings.

Free from the ricochet of other people,
bothersome mouth-breathing,
exactingness of places. Your spleen,
or another inexplicable organ,
happiest when left alone.

Buy for $10 on Amazon here.

Canned is a chapbook of poems about loss and disappointment, wonder and joy. Sometimes prismatic. Sometimes pissy.

The poet Matthew Arnold said of brevity, “Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.” Poet Tori Grant Welhouse not only embodies that rare economy of language, her imagery is often startling, getting at the painful ‘aha’ moments of life deftly. I truly enjoyed this book from cover to cover.

–Lucy Simpson, reader, poet and artist

Example Poem

Canned

When he summons her
the gears of her heart freewheel.
That’s what she remembers --
careening behind her ribcage.
No brakes to the thing
set in motion by some
immutable guylaw.
Depend on it, he says,
blowing smoke from a gourd,
hollowed-out calabash,
voice creeping
righteous in her ear,
This will turn out swell for you.
He slides across the desk
a Separation Agreement.
All she can hear are s’s,
scapegoat slings
c l o t t i n g ophidian eyes.

Buy for $14 at Finishing Line Press here.