If you want some fresh new poetry, Misty Skaggs’ first ever chapbook Biscuits and Blisters serves it up right. From her collection:
Country Eggs
The fear grips me
as I crack speckled
country eggs
on the brim
of my favorite mixing bowl.
The fear
of fertilization.
Sheer and sudden terror,
at the thought
of what I might find
beyond the thin shell.
The fear of a half-formed
fetal chick
plopping out
to land with a sickening splash
in my cake batter.
~
Here’s what people who know what’s what have to say about the work.
At one time, proper manners said that you never eat with your elbows on the table. However, Biscuits and Blisters said to hell with manners. This collection is a meal that doesn’t try to tell you how to eat. The poems of Misty Skaggs are honest in their seasoning. Generous with her stories. And trust me. You will have no problem finishing your plate and asking for seconds. She’s that good on the page.
– Jude McPherson , author of I Hate Crowds
I have known Misty Skaggs since she was a girl, and I’m here to tell you she is bone-true to the woman you’ll meet in these pages. She loves what the rest of us would do away with: weeds, peach trees without harvest, lard, the back road, our grandmothers. In Biscuits and Blisters we have the first work of what will surely turn out to be a lifetime of beloved and wrought poetry from Skaggs. I look so forward to her next book and her next.
– Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory
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Misty Skaggs is an author, artist, activist and three time college drop out. She was born and raised in the backwoods of Eastern Kentucky, where she still resides out at the end of a gravel road in Elliott County. She currently serves as Appalachian Features Editor at Rabble Lit, a working class journal for the arts. Skaggs’ roots show through in nearly every sentence and her poetry and prose have been featured in literary journals across the Appalachian region for well over a decade. When she isn’t writing, the poet enjoys hitting up musty thrift stores, drinking too much coffee and growing a kickass garden. You can find more of her work online at rabblelit.com or at her blog, lipstickhick.tumblr.com