Praise for HANNIBAL
Hannibal surprises not only with every flip of a page and every new poem, but from line to line. This is an entirely unique voice and vision—intimate and edgy, musical and casual, funny and scary. The reader feels directly addressed, by someone familiar, but the poems are also full of startling imagery. The figurative is made even more eerie and powerful than it otherwise would be, being hidden, as it often is, within the context of a plain-spoken directness (“Gibbous moon faint in the midday sky / forms enough of a circle to get its drift across…”). All things spare here are deceptively complex. The poems accumulate in power, and, via juxtaposition, keep the reader hungry and satisfied at the same time. There are so many experiments being successfully pursued here, so many thrilling risks being taken in this work, that one has a sense this poet has reinvented poetry; however, this is a poet who knows her craft, has command of it, is always in conversation with the traditions of her art, while she consistently, ingeniously, is making it new. Hannibal is a wildly important and game-changing book by a poet whose sensibility brings us, through poetry, an entirely new way of seeing the world, ourselves in it, and the art of the poem. —Laura Kasischke
Sparkling with intimacy and personal flare, Hannibal explores the commonplace with devastating directness and emotional vibrancy that is by turns restrained and bravely open. Deft, funny at the most unlikely times, unafraid of the weird, these poems are as beguiling as they are dangerous. Alcohol provided. The fuse is lit. —Dean Young
HANNIBAL by SHAUNA HANNIBAL
102 pages, soft cover, perfect-bound, 5.5" x 7.5"
DIRTY WORD
The Reverse French Manicure
has the same proportion of nude
to white as the French Manicure
only the white semi-circle
is at the base of the nail
instead of the tip.
At the base where
on your natural nail
those crescent moons
lunula rise up.
The Reverse French
in effect gives you
upside-down lunula.
It’s a sneaky trick.
Uvula’s another word
that sounds dirty
for a part of the body
that typically is not.
What you can reach with
your uvula’s not much,
it’s too far back
at the soft palate
of your mouth.
A lot of things don’t get
to ever come into contact
with each other.
Too bad your bony cochlea
will never know the feeling
deep inside my gut.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shauna Hannibal lives in San Francisco.
This is her first book.
FORKLIFT BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Shauna Hannibal
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN 978-0-9995931-5-8
Edited by Matt Hart
Book and cover design by Eric Appleby
Cover illustration by Annelie Carlström
Author photo by Tyrone McCloskey