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I couldn’t see myself at the bottom I woke up on the dirt floor of the old cellar I had new limbs

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BRUTE

Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

2018

Selected by Joy Harjo

Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets, the Walt Whitman Award is given annually to the winner of an open competition among American poets who have not yet published a book of poems.

BRUTE

POEMS

Emily Skaja

Graywolf Press

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 by Emily Skaja

The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401

Published in the United States of America

Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-55597-835-8

Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-835-8

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

First Graywolf Printing, 2019

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947085

Cover design: Mary Austin Speaker

Cover art: Walton Ford, Gleipnir. Image courtesy of Walton Ford and Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Dedication

for the women in my life

& for anyone vulnerable to flight

BRUTE

I: MY HISTORY AS

You remember too much,

my mother said to me recently.

Why hold onto all that? And I said,

Where can I put it down?

—ANNE CARSON

MY HISTORY AS

In my history, I was bones eating paper

or I was paper eating bones. Semantics.

I lived in a narrow house;

I lived with a man who said

You fucked up your own life, who said

I could never love someone so heavy.

The place was brick on brick

with iron grates covering the windows—

rowhouse cage, South Philly. I was learning

how some of us are made to be carrion birds

& some of us are made to be circled.

Somewhere in this education

I stopped eating. Held up my hands