A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery gives voice to abused children, murdered women, research animals, war veterans, and even metronomes and lampshades. In poems inspired by Ovid, Tina Carlson explores the roots of voicelessness and journeys into metamorphosis, granting speech to those ignored or victimized and thereby allowing them to provide witness to their own lives.
Backyard of Her Alphabets
Ghost Town on Iris Avenue
A Guide to Tongue Tie Surgery
My Mother as Moon
Cigarette Smoke and a Blue Impala
Gran Via
Agoraphobia
My Father Comes Home from War with Guns
My Father Prayed
Mud Babies
The Embassy of Silence
At the Rest Stop, Fully Gloved, She Calls Me Mommy
You Will Dream that Great Aunt Dolor Loves Your Wild Hair
Dark Dowry
How holy the cloth sewn sidewise
Sheltering in Place for Beginners
Coat-Grave, Nation of Moths
ALMA
Anatomy of Silence
Fin Feather Bark and Skin
Day after America
Metronome and Daruma Doll
As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room
Lampshade and Floor Mat
Turn the Ship Around
Saint Ursula
Heaven
Snow Queen
The Little Robber Girl
Monster
Open Your Mouth
Why did you kill your wife, mr XYZ?
Thirteen Children Rescued from Their Parents Testify
Ice Matron
West Side Murders, Seven Years Later
How She Becomes a Fountain
Every Bird in My Blood Has a Name
Flo and the Frozen Girl
Guest Place in the Shadow
There I Stood, in All My Forms
Until I Could No Longer Fly and So Became a Map: Pegasus
From the Island of Pomegranates
Pandora on the Mother Road
Atlas
There I stood begging at the door of my death
I Fled the Dry Lips of Men
Dermoid
Dear Human,
The Flying Boy
Wearing His Father's Dog Tags
Feathers Appear on Branches as Flame
And When He Thought He Had Found Me
In the Tree Museum
The Painter
Martia
Avalanche
Machu Picchu
Notes
Acknowledgements
