thread me an exit

back / of the body jaw to ankle still twisted floss. / have you had some extra stress this year? / do a quick inventory. as of this morning / all three kids alive

These poems ache - with the desperate love of a mother, yearning, grief, and the surprise of growing older in the liminal space between elder parents and long-limbed children. Vardaman's use of language is assured and muscular. In one poem, she may warm the reader up with long lines that metamorphize from playful litany to slicing emotional truth, and in another a single diminutive stanza delivers the energy of a bomb.

It's rare for a poet to expose the quotidian of life so utterly that the reader is left breathless, but Vardaman creates deep feeling from ordinary life, transforming it into astonishment.

thread me an exit was a 2024 selection of the Brain Mill Press + Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Chapbook Contest.