Diane Raptosh
As for Your Grandma Concettine
Let x = any number of grandmothers / Let’s say yours never praised your name / Let’s test / Let’s circumflex / My history = your grandmother ^my mom^ me > you / Let’s wand | Let’s witch / Let rooster bones stew / Let the clouds whoop / Let marrow steam / Let’s dress ourselves in drips / Let’s lax / Let why walk / Let fat hollow out its stock / Let’s intersperse love
with buckled knees and straightened backs / with sleepers snugged in twos like sticks || Let theeling = thoughts x feeling / Let pain uncalyx on the surface of the Earth / Let’s wail / Let’s tell our will: Let service urge / Let me allot / Let bones forgive / Let it snow blues / Let me backspace / Most history = prehistory + matriarchy / How I <3 this / Let us unhex / Let us both yes and doing so narrow the between / Let’s salve the x / Anthrax the past / Let freedom drink to river bingo / Let roosters strip themselves of spurs / Know what? Let’s blow this place / Let’s name ourselves / Let’s SpaceX / Let me unpack / Let’s blow my mom this x / Let’s raise the bones / Let’s let the heritable go / Let meanness be / Let’s let my mother mean > Let’s galaxy
Let us be Concettine which = pure / Let Concettine ink rad concepts / Let us now re-love our exes / Let’s let the brakes come off in our heads / Let the one sun lux / Let’s un-electroplax fish / Let’s mom ourselves / Let breath = let us affix / Let us cleanse the x / Let’s crystalline / Let’s pet Rhode Island Reds / Let dead Tom Petty peal / Let the gentleness rip / Let’s let that Leghorn chicken live
Diane Raptosh’s collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. She teaches literature and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her ninth collection of poetry, I Eric America, will be published by Etruscan Press in fall 2024). www.dianeraptosh.com