Admissions Essay

Traci Brimhall

               I am a good student. Voted most likely to tryharder. Not voted most likely for fairytales, though I havebeen both hooded and wolfed. My honors thesis on the roleof motherlessness and love hunger brought the candiedhouse down.               I could’ve been valedictorian if the metricwas ardor and potential for transformation. I recognizethe chemical structure of oxytocin and how to calculatemy best chance for a free drink from across the room,and both have strong angles.               I know how it feels when that hormone unlatchesmy ribs, silks my legs. I don’t confuse that with lovebecause in each unit of intimacy, I enter slow. Adjustmy breath. Recognize the accusations that areconfessions.               I excelled in the serious ethics of kissing, howit makes the body more image than idea, but I admitthat sometimes I like to lick mezcal and grapefruit froma hero’s morally ambiguous mouth. I’m sorry.               That’s how I know I’m a successful candidate.The temptations. The failures. The ever afters of forgivenessI have already lived. For so long I offered others the loveI wanted to receive, the cursive letters and lost slippers.The balanced equations and checkbooks. Years of servicein the scales of care. Change my story. Accept me.

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Traci Brimhall’s newest book, Love Prodigal, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2024. She is also the author of: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon); Saudade (Copper Canyon); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Parks Service. Brimhall lives in Manhattan, KS and serves as the current Poet Laureate of Kansas.

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SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami) was co-founded by Jen Karetnick and Catherine Esposito Prescott. SWWIM publishes, promotes, and celebrates women writers, trans and cis women, nonbinary, intersex, and other gender-expansive communities, with a year-round reading series held at The Betsy-South Beach in Miami Beach, FL and the online poetry journal SWWIM Every Day.

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