Ethel

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Chapbooks / Mini-Books

Ethel

Frances Cannon

Succulent Thief

It began with the single leaf—a sharp-lipped specimen which had
fallen into a nest of cactus fur. It didn’t belong, so I plucked it out
nd held it in my palm as we walked around the greenhouse. I kept
it there in my hand like a secret while you gave me a tour of your
favorite plants: the silver-dollar, a squash relative, with coin-like
leaves and spiral tendrils, the cork-stemmed passionflower with
little black fruits. While you bent your face into the flower which
smells like rotten fruit, I stole a leaf from the Spiderwort and
slipped it into the pocket of my wide-legged pants. You gave me a
demonstration of the pollination dance of the bird of paradise,
and I snapped three globes from the string-of-pearl plant. Later, I
potted my loot in a ceramic cup in my kitchen. If they survive, I’ll
confess.

Frances Cannon is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums, currently teaching creative writing, fiction workshops, and literature courses at Champlain College and the Vermont College of Fine Arts, as well as visual arts and writing courses at the Vermont Commons School. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Iowa, and a BA in poetry and printmaking from the University of Vermont. She has recently been published by MIT Press, her book of experimental literary translation, Walter Benjamin Reimagined. Several of her books in various mediums have been published: her graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, with Gold Wake Press; a book of poems and paintings, Tropicalia, with Vagabond Press; and a collection of poems, Uranian Fruit, with Honeybee Press. She has a poetry chapbook forthcoming with Ethel Zine and a book of hybrid text and image with Prompt Press. Frances was born in Utah and has since lived in Oregon, Vermont, California, Maine, Iowa, Italy, Guatemala, France, and Mexico making art and writing books.

Volume 6 - August 2020