Anna Veprinska

CAR COVERED WITH SNOW Before I clear the windows, I sometimes sit inside. And the stillness is such that I lose how the day works. It soaks up all the steely details: March ripped out of February, a raw thing. Sometimes my son has patience. And we sit a few minutes like this in the weird half-light. He says: we're in a closed fist, Mama. Or, it's like the car's eye is closed. We're deep in the brain then, seeing as the blind see, all listening. Outside, the cardinal tinks tinks his alarm call, his scared call. I hear it: the snow so terribly white. And he is brilliant, conspicuous.

March / ripped out of February, a raw thing.

Marianne Boruch

How It Happens I want to staple myself to a passing cloud, so I am blameless for war.

Victoria Chang

Edits submitted! Third collection of poems forthcoming in April. It was hard to return to many of the poem-fragments that make up this book, because they speak to a wounded time. Pre-orders available at the link in my bio. Thank you for your support, always 🙏

De voorkant van het boek Bonememory

Het duurde even, maar het was het wachten waard! De gedichtenbundel #Bonememory van @annaveprinska.bsky.social heb ik eindelijk binnen.
Zo mooi, ik ga het niet droog houden

#CurrentlyReading

Thank you for reading, Kristina 🙏

Thank you for sharing this poem, Boris.

What, you may ask, does a forgotten poem by a foreign-born Hollywood extra have to tell us now? All I can say is that Alexander Voloshin’s SIDETRACKED has been a source of comfort for me over the past few years—a sympathetic voice reaching across decades. “Been there,” he nods…

The Uses of Sorrow Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

-22 in Kiev today. Another poem from Bonememory by @annaveprinska.bsky.social

Thank you so much for sharing, Robert. In deep hopes for peace in Kiev and all of Ukraine 🙏

“Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me.”

—Louise Glück, “The Red Poppy”

Such a tender poem - thank you for this 🙏

Thank you for this deeply moving poem - psalm - for our times, @ilyakaminsky.bsky.social

Poets – in their boundless-absurd desire to fly – / flock their verse with birds, babbling / and babbling and calling it birdsong.

Loving BONEMEMORY by
@annaveprinska.bsky.social

Oh, thank you so much for reading and sharing, Robert. Brings joy to know you’re enjoying it 🙏

Honoured to have Bonememory as an Alberta bestseller in December. Books seem to come and go so quickly these days. Thank you for continuing to read this one 🙏

Our literary series forwards bold and lively voices that entertain and engage. Discover Brave & Brilliant poetry. https://ow.ly/fOzG50XNrhE

“history used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and collect its dues”
—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn."
—Louis Adamic

Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón 1976 – More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

it's that time again, folks

Probably “Demon Copperhead” for prose & “Bonememory” for poetry. @annaveprinska.bsky.social

Oh, thank you so much. I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed Bonememory 🙏

“At first I was lonely, but then I was / curious.”

—Ada Limón, “The Endlessness”

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We've come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more?
To love harder?
- Ada Limón

“the hiss and crackle whispering of things” - such a beautiful poem!

“The poem does not come, but its place is kept set.”

Such an immersive winter poem! Thank you 🙏

Wind Chill The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever the cold road has taken them. How ceremonious snow is, with what quiet severity it turns even death to a formal arrangement. Alone at my window, I listen to the wind, to the small leaves clicking in their coffins of ice.

Another wintry poem by Linda Pastan, this one decidedly darker.

Just listened! What a wonderful conversation! Thank you for putting this together.

Bonememory navigates a lattice of identity with nuance and wordplay as identity wanes and waxes and temporary peace is found.

Anna Veprinska's Bonememory. Reviewed at Alberta Views Magazine https://ow.ly/cxvV50XmCXA