(sold out)
Muscles Involved, a chapbook by Erin Kautza. We’ve reprinted this book in a second edition to make Erin’s wild, fierce & musical language available to more readers. This chapbook is hand-sewn and has letterpress printed cover, with linoleum cut and metal type. The the inside pages are laser printed. The endpapers are hand-marbled and will vary from book to book.
An excerpt:
Doll-Baby Hand to Control Someone (Jocelyn, 1953)
How I adore lemon yellow: palmed
penny candy, fleck
in any lively eye. When I look at him
(over and over and sly)
want to lick-lick both.
Want these sensations:
high-sun afternoon, pinking,
long blonde wheat. Long
vegetal tufts like upended Rapunzels.
All that honey-bunny hair and
want it in my mouth. Him
in my mouth.
Instead: yank beets ruthlessly
from black earth. Small
slits down
hidden middles reveals:
all dark blood,
not a single addition.
Press burning lips
to ripe wounds and
coming away another woman or
coming away a woman. Say:
let’s devastate mandrake too. Let’s
mash two against each other like dirty magic dolls. Let’s howl as lost wolves, moonlight as magpies, shave our potent toys into supernatural teas. Put something on the fire that smolders in the exact right way. Drink this. Push up skirts. Something will tickle down deep. Just sit the edges of blankets with me. Just eat this cake.
This book was first published in an edition of 45, accordion bound with letterpress covers.
Cover illustration by Jillian Schiavi
