{"id":1389,"date":"2017-05-26T17:53:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T17:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/?post_type=product&p=1389"},"modified":"2025-05-31T13:26:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T13:26:18","slug":"in-which-i-play-the-runaway-rochelle-hurt","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/product\/in-which-i-play-the-runaway-rochelle-hurt\/","title":{"rendered":"In Which I Play the Runaway<\/em>, Rochelle Hurt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barrow Street 2015 Prize Winner<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was born with a gift for gall and grit,\u201d Rochelle Hurt writes\u2014a line that echoes through every poem in this collection. She spares nothing and bares all that needs baring about family, place, and relationships\u2014how they reflect each other, blurred in tarnished mirrors. With a Sylvia Plath-like abandon and urgency, every single word feels completely necessary; words spoken with a vigor and honesty that are felt in the gut; words that remain lodged in the back of the throat.
\n\u2014Richard Blanco, Contest Judge<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Textured with the silt of a river that has never been itself twice, In Which I Play the Runaway<\/em> gifts us the voice of a poet who is not only willing but determined to trouble the conventions of two-dimensional portraiture. Here, fables and futures, memory and mythology, and objects and subjects flicker out of their assigned places in the diorama\u2019s mirror so that we might re-imagine the transformative possibilities of a sense of place: \u201chome is a bullet\u201d the I \u201cswallows again and again,\u201d and from an empty grave, a girl will wake \u201cnot saved\u2026 but changed.\u201d With a great intentionality of formal range and a voice that haunts its world with its clear minerality and purpose, Hurt insists on the irreducibility of the daughters, wives, women, and girls who find any concept of home in this book, in which \u201call the women I\u2019ve been\u2026 have never ceased \/ to believe they exist.\u201d We are lucky to have this book in the world.
\n\u2014Lo Kwa Mei-en<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In her new poetry collection, In Which I Play the Runaway<\/em>, Rochelle Hurt rewrites everything previously said about place. It\u2019s as if Hurt took a map of America, redrew all the state lines, and saved only the best city names: Aimwell, Nightmute, Neverstill, Honesty. Then she filled those towns with tough beauty and longing, everyday objects and encounters acquiring new weight in a landscape that aches like home while also striking us with its singularity. \u201cAs expected, after the wedding, the house \/ became a cough we lived in, trembling \/ in the throat of that asthmatic spring,\u201d begins the poem \u201cSelf-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana,\u201d which goes on to show us, \u201cThe streets stacked and curved like fingers \/ on a grease-knuckled hand gripping \/ the waist of our Midwestern dream.\u201d This is an unforgettable book, a vital and compelling voice.
\n\u2014Mary Bidding<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the year of miracles\/piling up inside you, tiny\/and black as chokeberries.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this way, I was forever\/the runaway, indolent trinket of his.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Poem in Which I Play the Runaway<\/strong>
\nIt could open with a party, strewn
\nwith girls like tinsel, girls looking
\nfor a house to stuff themselves in,
\ngirls with two parents, girls glaring
\nwith the joy of needlessness.
\nOr a chase scene: some ranch house
\nwith walls thin as a mother\u2019s dress,
\nlong emptied of men and closing on me.
\nI never wanted a home in him,
\nbut the sex was like licking sheets
\nof corrugated iron, my torn maw
\nbreathing in the corrosion. The scent
\nof him alone was like coming
\nhome to a father\u2019s midnight grip.
\nIn this way, I was forever
\nthe runaway, indolent trinket of his.
\nBut if you want it, I\u2019ll give
\nthe story of a woman\u2019s deboning
\nby a pair of junk-rutted hands,
\nher good marrow honed to a prick
\non a promise like a diamond file.
\nAnd how she loved it, the sin itself
\na new kind of homelessness.<\/p>\n

Diorama of a Fire<\/strong>
\nIn the living room, evidence
\nof accident: glue dropped
\non the floor, welling with the glare
\nof the steel nail scissors, giant
\nbeside the candy box sofa. See, propped
\non top, two horse-haired dolls.
\nSee their fixed elbows, greased with heat. See,
\nstuffed in this one\u2019s hand, a linen scrap\u2014
\nmy sister dabbing at my knee, stirring
\nthe gravel trapped beneath
\nthe plastic flap of sallow skin.
\nWhat care,
\nto weave these bits of glass and rock
\nand grass into the flesh of the knee.
\nLeft of the paper partition a moth lies
\nfolded\u2014my mother\u2014soot shoulders
\ncurled, face taut as she falls
\ninfinitely further inward
\nand her shoebox house coughs up gray bolls
\nof cotton, pasted to the walls around her.
\nBut the spark is further back.
\nI sift
\nthe stack of cut-out colors\u2014the black
\nchain of smoke, the orange match head,
\nthe brown shred of flooring\u2014and find
\nat my fingers another white rag, paper
\nedges scalloped, cloud-round.
\nI remember
\nit into the cardboard kitchen, where it sits
\nstoveside, doused in peroxide, dripping.
\nNow watch: I am a godhand
\npulling loose threads from the curtains,
\ntesting the corners with breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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