Notice of Risks by Corinna McClanahan Schroeder

“The great bulk of novel readers are females; and to them such impressions (as are conveyed through fiction) are peculiarly mischievous: for, first, they are naturally more sensitive, more impressionable, than the other sex; and secondly, their engagements are of a less engrossing character—they have more time as well as more inclination to indulge in reveries of fiction.”—“Moral and Political Tendency of the Modern Novels,” Church of England Quarterly Review (1842)

Once, when she was reading, a paper nest of wasps buzzed between her ears / Once, when she was reading, a fishing knife sliced open her gleaming / hair curling in the humid words / Once, she slipped free of her body like an omniscient fog / Once, fingertips throbbed / Once, when she was reading, her brother ripped the book in two / Once, the story’s rain ruined her cheeks and shoes / Once, her book locked behind glass / father holding the key / Once, when she was reading, the sugar of syllables crunched between her teeth / Once, she wandered lost through brambles and thorns / Once, snow drifts heaped in her bones / Once, thighs to chest: let her go let her go let her go / Once, when she was reading, her mother burned the book / a flare, then a smoldering / Once, when she was reading, her body was a wool coat and she could not swim in its weight / Once, she slipped her book / inside another book to keep it safe / Once, she spit out the words like sour wine / Once, an easterly wind blew from inside / Once, when she was reading, early flowers rose on the fields of her arms / Once, there was only blight / Once, she was a sopping sheet wrung dry

Corinna McClanahan Schroeder is the author of the poetry collection Inked, winner of the 2014 X. J. Kennedy Poetry. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and Blackbird.