Wait
Alison Stine
The Brittingham Prize in Poetry
Ronald Wallace, General Editor
Winner of the 2011 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, selected by Cornelius Eady
In a small town under a spell, a child bride prays for the sheriff’s gun. Iron under a bed stops a nightmare. The carousel artist can carve
only birds. Part fairy tale and part gothic ballad, Wait spans a single year: the year before a young woman’s marriage. Someone is always watching —from the warehouse, from the woods. And on the outskirts of town, someone new is waiting.
The birds landed
in our braided hair, and the men
called but could not find us. You
were coming. You were coming.
I didn’t know. I would have curled
in a rabbit whorl, a mouse nest,
in leaf-spilled shade. I am a bird
in the field and I want you to find me.
I want you to find me. Tell me wait.
—excerpt from “Wife”
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“Alison Stine renders landscape with a riveting, almost gothic ferocity. ‘Bone makes a sound,’ Stine tells us, and indeed the universe of Wait crackles, burns brightly, while also leading into a ‘darkness of [its] own.’ The collection is impressive not just for its immense formal grace, but also for the adamant, forceful desire—its ‘call of skin’—that singes through every poem.”—Maggie Nelson, author of Jane:
A Murder
 Alison Stine is the author of Ohio Violence. Winner of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, she lives in Athens, Ohio.
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March 2011
LC: 2010038897 PS
88 pp. 6 x 9
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