Cecilia Woloch is the author of four award-winning collections of poems, most recently Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press 2006 Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Carpathia, newly available from BOA Editions Ltd., is her fifth book.

Click HERE to read more about Cecilia.

This is a gorgeous book by a poet who is passionately alive in the world.  —Natasha Trethewey

Fireflies

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn’t hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who’ve wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don’t even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

From Carpathia, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009.

To purchase a copy of Carpathia from BOA Editions Ltd., Click HERE.  To purchase from Amazon.com, click HERE.

If you’d like to keep up with Carpathia’s journey, check out the Carpathia Readings Calendar HERE and join us on the Carpathia Facebook ‘Fan’ Page HERE.

This website is under construction ~ Contact Carmen Palmer at carmencpalmer@gmail.com with questions and/or suggestions.