This I Can Tell You walks in through the front door and looks under the sofa. It measures the length of the wall, taps to find the beams. It removes the hammer and the nails from the toolbox, places them in a line to find the difference. This is a poetic narrative that examines structures within a home. It navigates Spering’s muffled timeline due to the fragility of memory as a result of trauma and the secrecy maintained within a family, like a well-groomed dog.

What people are saying:

“A delicate, disembodied voice-over quality that threads together a series of still-life fragmented memories characterizes this debut publication. Just as her family started out living in a basement and then moving (upward? away? elsewhere in the same structure?), the images rise from a subterranean place in the mind and bubble upwards in words, tentatively pieced together to create and then fill in outlines of an uneasy family life haunted by loss, separation, unspoken pain and anger. Skillfully mimetic of how trauma is retroactively recalled/ or not, narrated/ or not, this series of poetic meditations tells a story of everyday resilience through re-collection.”

--Maria Damon, author of Post-Literary ‘America’: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries

About the author:

Brandi Spering resides in South Philadelphia where she writes, sews and paints. Favoring non-fiction and poetry above else, her work tends to sway between both, carrying a little over each time. She has released several chapbooks through BookWook Feminist Press Collective such as I’ll Meet You at the Winking Pig, Goonados in the Su Fluff, and Leaflets. Her work can also be found in Perennial Press’ Super/Natural: Art and Fiction for the Future, as well as STARDUST Magazine’s Issue 5: STILLS.

Pre-orders will open November 2020 and ship January 2021.

chapbook preorders!

super / natural

This I Can Tell You pre-orders

donation

logo tote

s/n hoodie

s/n hoodie