Books by Tresha Faye Haefner
When the Moon Had Antlers (Pine Row Press), Method and Mystery (The Poetry Salon) and Take This Longing (Finishing Line)
How to Identify the Body of God
who has no body.
The God whose body is glacier and apostrophe.
Whose language is lagoon and Chinook salmon swimming upstream.
A God who keeps hiding shells in her pocket, destroying
the dinosaurs and keeping their skeletons in tar light.
If I chase these chalices across every lunar eclipse,
if I shine
like a horse and powder my eyes green, as the fins
of a fighter fish,
if I spin myself into sunset, Ferris wheel forward
and chisel my image into the side of a church,
if I follow
this scent, fill each footprint with alabaster
and stone,
if I leave my tooth lodged in your heart,
can you tell me what kind of God you are?
What kind of animal I am?
Originally Published in Wild Roof Journal
A Walk through the Parking Lot at Midnight
The worm goes its whole life
without owning a face.
One angular stream of light,
it eats through darkness alone.
Tonight cities sleep underground
waiting to be rediscovered.
Atoms lie pressed
by the weight of cars.
I walk through the parking lot, moving
from one sky to another.
I wanted to live forever, but
metal rusts, plastic melts thin.
Each atom swirls through the space of my body
like a salmon swimming through Alaska.
Carbon atoms bumping into each other in a stream.
This night is a picture of the brain.
Neurons fire through the darkness like meteors.
I walk from one night to another.
Moon of the skull orbiting the earth,
and inside my body, the bones shimmering in the darkness
like stars.
Winner of the Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize
Originally published in The Cincinnati Review
In this book you’ll find prompts by Tresha, using poems from the following writers.
Kim Addonizio, Sally Ashton, Francesca Bell, Lin Nelson Benedek, Michelle Bitting, Elya Braden, Chanel Brenner, Antoinette Brim, Alessandra Castellanos, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Brendan Constantine, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Alicia Elkort, Marcus Ellman, Debra Franco, Hannah Gamble, Jennifer Givhan, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Tony Gloeggler, Amanda Gorman, Kelly Grace Thomas, Jack Grapes, Sonia Greenfield, Bonnie S. Kaplan, Tobey Kaplan, Tracey Knapp, Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong, Jennie Linthorst, Suzanne Lummis, Sarah Maclay, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Douglas Manuel, Mighty Mike McGee, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Danielle Mitchell, Linda Neal, Nancy K. Pearson, David Perez, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Mehnaz Sahibzada, Maryrose Smyth, Michelle Suzanne Snyder, Nancy Lynée Woo