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Alsop's Tables

by  Jessica Grim and Melanie Neilson

Alsop's Tables, cover

Alsop's Tables is a series of pieces Grim and Neilson wrote at the invitation of Jean Foos in the spring of 2022. The book was published on the occasion of FORMATIONS: The Southeast Queens Biennial 2022, an exhibition presented at King Manor Museum and York College Fine Arts Gallery (CUNY). It also celebrates over 30 years of collaboration between Grim, Neilson, and Foos, which began with Big Allis magazine; Grim and Neilson as founding co-editors and Foos as designer art director. 

Pleasure, surprise, and comedy bob up in team generativity, seeing how things can be composed together that wouldn’t have otherwise been. This sequence of poems was produced in 14 days while electronically surfing Mary Alsop King’s letters. It is comprised of several individual pieces by each writer, and the co-written "Sunday Sonnet." Foos produced the book's imagery.

SUNDAY SONNET
When the servant reads WHALES in the sea
tell the Coachman also my book and heart.
Each reader looks at the indentured face
traveling by page tenderest lessons
beseem comfrey to cog and ritual
spare acts to oversee
former method things done.
See the beast eats not of the cherry tree
dreamt its sleepy head killed for table-top
some want of which attends our trespasses.
Reader aisling is the Cuckoo's nurse maid
where scarred lines go out of the house to hold.
Through the back door, hams come to mind my Dear
orchard glass acres mend.

Price: $12.00
Please add shipping in US or Canada: $3.00
To purchase Alsop’s Tables, please email Jessica Grim.
ISBN: 978-1-933974-47-4

© Ragged Sky Press