IN THE PROVINCELANDS by Janet MacFadyen

Fetch

                              I took
a carrot with two long roots, rounded,
even sumptuous if you looked close up,
tapering into slender legs. It had a tight
pert butt, nice crease where the cheeks
met top of the thighs, then a stomach
topped short by a bush of stiff brown hair.
Paring knife in hand, I was ready
to saw that fetch in half, stared at the
abdomen and stopped, put the idea back
in the fridge, dreamed of dying,
dreamed of creamed corn and having
another ear, heard the abruptly silenced shriek
of who knows what from the wood, saw
those yellow eyes take a bead on me.
            And then I knew
there was no way out, the body
is served up at the dinner table. So the next
night I took a butcher’s knife and prayed,
freed an orange foot from its orange
ankle, ankle from calf, calf from knee, knee
from thigh, came up short where the torso
met the leg, closed my eyes and in one
firm stroke parted the lower stomach from
the crotch, which I pitched to the waiting
she-bitch on the floor who swallowed it whole,
unblinking, and wanted more.

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Reviews:

• SGEM World Science interviews Janet
• Massachusetts Poetry
• Poet and poetry blogger Nancy Chen Long interviews Janet

Best of the Net nomination for Janet's poem "What I do about the nightmares"

It's a rare consciousness that can both absorb and express how daily life and the fantastic continually co-exist. Within a world full of otherness(es), Janet MacFadyen remains unflinchingly open, even porous, so that her poems blast, twist, or softly seduce the reader into completely joining her.

Who knows what bloodlines run from the brain's web to the forest floor, she asks rising from a moment which could be merely nightmarish, or Does grace exist? It's not at the grocery store. A quite Dickinsonian question. The two-part title poem carries its own grace and is particularly loving and encouraging. This is a beautiful book which deepens on re-reading. With a language both precise and vibrant, and a strong interior music, MacFadyen's poems both apprehend and dissolve boundaries so that she can truly embrace those contradictions that might break her heart. Or ours.

-- Pamela Stewart, Award winning author of The Red Window and The Ghost Farm.

It's one thing to live in the natural world, but it's another to move from naturally being one thing to being another in the world. MacFadyen delights in deliciously observing how the self shifts and ebbs and flows like the tide.

-- Gian Lombardo, Poet & Director of Quale Press

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Other books by Janet MacFadyen

Adrift in the House of Rocks

Waiting to Be Born

A Newfoundland Journal

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In addition to State of Grass, her new collection forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry books, including a photo-poetry collaboration Adrift in the House of Rocks (New Feral Press 2019), Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017), and her Slate Roof chapbook, In the Provincelands (2012). Recent and forthcoming work can be found in The Blue Nib, CALYX, Crannóg, Honoring Nature (anthology), Naugatuck River Review, Migrations (anthology), Q/A Poetry, Scientific American, SGEM World Science blog, Soul-Lit, and Sweet. She has held a 7-month fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, a residency at Cill Rialiag, and is the managing editor of Slate Roof Press. She lives in Franklin County, MA.