BIBFRAME Work

Title

Ghostlit

Type

  • Monograph
  • Text

Contribution

Subject

Genre Form

Language

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Content

Summary

"Intimate, urgent, and relentlessly inventive, the poems in Ghostlit reflect upon mythology and feminist pop culture and contemporary ideology as they may become embedded in the psyches and even the bodies of their inheritors. Through visceral and sometimes gothic-inspired images, mythological allusions, and the assemblage of strands of narrative, the poems in this collection chart the ways in which manipulative emotional strategies on individual and cultural levels inflict lingering harm upon minds and bodies. Throughout, the poems peel back the layers of what it means for an abuse survivor to reclaim a sense of self-long after the damage has been done. "It turns out that the years I believed myself lucky/were partly responsible for my thinking/there was something deeply wrong with me" could be understood as a refrain for the speaker in Ghostlit or as a shorthand for a cautionary tale about how many survivors may be encouraged to deny the reality of abuse"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Immediately after we wed, I saw a snake -- At the memory care center, the residents don't want to make Valentines -- Before I became the wife, I'd get down on my haunches -- Picture this: you wear girl-sized clothes the summer -- Having returned from a trip, I found the lake -- For days, the sunflowers watch me -- Eurydice, the seamstress who laced me -- Once, we saw barn swallows fucking, & the pendulum sweep -- Though I always took Plan B before we had a chance for a baby -- Our apartment still aromatic with the trout lily -- It turns out that the years I believed myself lucky -- I got used to church bells & sun showers -- Leaving Vatican City, I was packed shoulder to shoulder -- When we were making our descent, some rock rolled into my path -- The wife could not open her mouth to justify herself -- It was on a balcony over the Mediterranean that I found myself slurping the bodies -- In the dream in which I refuse to repair us -- The best part of a descent is looking up -- Lying in the hospital bed, I wonder why every song I love -- I was five & running errands with my mother -- That morning, he kept his distance: blackout curtains, no breakfast -- Every summer, you read Middlemarch but never make it past the middle -- Recently, there has been an infestation of crows -- At the memory care center, the parlor resembles -- It's late, your cat is clawing the backseat, & you're afraid he'll nod off -- From NPR, the wife learns of the hog problem in Texas -- On the phone, Mom says the deer population continues -- In the horror story of my invention, it is the wife's unfocused gaze -- At least I feel something, I think, as I run the same route I took -- "Do Not Touch Without Assistance" reads the sign at the antique store -- In Sleeping with the Enemy, Julia Roberts plays a woman whose new life -- There is a fact of memory & there is a fact of feeling -- I love watching Irish step dancers, their feet tapping -- When I realize what to call it, I ask my therapist -- While online dating, Eurydice adds "black trumpet mushrooms" -- At the memory care center, the waters are calm before they are choppy -- During the tropical storm, my hands scrabbled -- Lying on the patient table - gel on the wand.

Authorized Access Point

Ziolkowski, Theodora, 1989-. Ghostlit

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11T20:16:07.515922+00:00
  • Agent: cbc
  • Status: c
  • Derived from: 23690437

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-11
  • Cataloger id: Unknown
  • Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
  • Description language: eng
  • Description authentication: pcc

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