Cover Art: James Tylor
Cover & Interior Design: Alban Fisher
Paperback, 38 pages
November 1, 2017, ISBN 978-1-936919-52-9
Winner, 2016 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize!
Michael Wasson Interviewed at LitHub
"Wasson . . . expresses an expansive sense of service to his people, and of witness to those who stand beyond the circle. From the American ghost of the book's title and the Homeric dead of its epigraph, through the hauntings of immediate family members, friends, elders, and ancestors, the poet takes seriously his task, "to grieve history." This potent phrase names history as both the object of mourning and the ambivalent process by which the survivor may recollect, recover, and restore what is lost . . . In his compact and explosive chapbook, Wasson conveys viscerally and eloquently—and with seemingly infinite compassion—the intimate legacies of this genocidal empire."
about This American Ghost
The poems in This American Ghost address the complicated and often invisible consequences of our American expansion—the violence and history of the indigenous body as an inheritor of trauma. Whether in the grief and lingering aftermath of a loved one’s suicide, counting the pulse of the chaotic viscera when entering indigenous myth, or re-witnessing the state-sanctioned loss and tearing of a body’s mother tongue, these poems stand waiting at the border between survival and what’s been erased—these ghosts left breathing and still longing for any bloom inside the wreckage of our American conquest.
Throughout this short collection, words and phrases are braided with English and nimipuutímt, images of surrealism enter desperate realities, underscoring how language—which begins in the body as it listens to the immediate world—is the only fabric we have to dress and ultimately give shape to our wounds.
This American Ghost by Michael Wasson is part of our limited edition Vinyl 45 Chapbook Series each title of which frequently sells out within the first months of publication. Get one while you can!
This American Ghost by Michael Wasson
On the Horizon
& I said
let there be dark
pouring from your mouth
at day break. Let there be
an aftertaste in the back
of the throat. Let each locust
leap from the slow light
dragged across the earth.
Let every angel not named
Michael ask do you not know
the click in the mouth
is a tear you are
to always live in? Let the garden
remember fire for it is you
who will dress the wounds
of this place. Let another god
forget you were ever born.
Let light begin &
blackout from remembering
flesh as a touch to tell you
the skull once kissed the blood
laced with warmth
held a body in place years ago.
That silence is forgotten
between each soft blow of the heart
until we finally stop. A name
we never speak anymore. A head
wound by living
a life here. Tonight let me tell you
human form is meant to be
a beauty I will continue
to ruin.
About Michael Wasson
Michael Wasson is the author of This American Ghost, winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Prize from YesYes Books. He is the winner of The Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry from Beloit Poetry Journal and his poems appear in American Poets, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, Bettering American Poetry, and Best New Poets. He is nimíipuu from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho.
