After Frida Kahlo’s Sin Esperanza & the Crohn’s Diagnosis
“wheeled in on a bed three times her size. / A bouquet of rotting meats, / organs, & calaveras ensconced / between her lips.”
Cassandra J Bruner
—1st Place Winner of the 2019 Emerging Poet Prize—
From guest judge Kim Addonizio: “A dark and sometimes darkly comic self-portrait that is wide-ranging, speaking to art, the female body, and the larger culture. One of many amazing far-reaching lines: “the way our poisoned bodies/ become feast for a board /of trustees.”
Cassandra J. Bruner, the 2019-2020 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow, earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University. A transfeminine poet and essayist, their writing has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Muzzle, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2019 Frost Place competition, her chapbook, The Wishbone Dress, is forthcoming from Bull City Press. Currently, she lives in Madison, teaching at University of Wisconsin.