Emily Corwin’s tenderling glows in the forest while bleeding sugary doll blood. Here, lovers wound themselves & their beloveds. Festooned with acute language, sound, & line-breaking, Corwin’s poems warn about The Dark. About Prozac & the hollows of trees. Ancient witches & modern boggarts such as mobile data both vex as Corwin sticks magic pins into dolls woven of liminal, earnest human sensibility. A complete journey, tenderling’s first word, “if”, unlocks a faerie realm of possibility. The last phrase—"dead gardens”—epitomizes a pungent, codependent marriage between bloom & rot readers witness betwixt brambles as constant, fragile light streams through.
Joey Gould, Poetry Editor
tenderling by Emily Corwin
Published by Stalking Horse Press