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Table of Contents

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE LIFTING DRESS

LAUREN BERRY received a BA from Florida State University and an MFA from the University of Houston, where she won the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry and served as poetry editor for Gulf Coast. In 20092010, she held the Diane Middlebrook Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. She lives in Houston.

THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES

The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation, Stephen Graham, Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation, Glenn and Renee Schaeffer, Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds, and the Edward T. Cone Foundation.

2010 COMPETITION WINNERS

LAUREN BERRY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS, The Lifting Dress

Selected by Terrance Hayes, to be published by Penguin Books

WILLIAM BILLITER OF CLINTON, NEW YORK, Stutter

Selected by Hilda Raz, to be published by University of Georgia Press

JAMES GRINWIS OF FLORENCE, MASSACHUSETTS, Exhibit of Forking Paths

Selected by Eleni Sikelianos, to be published by Coffee House Press

M.A. VIZSOLYI OF NEW YORK, NEW YORK, The Lamp with Wings: Love Sonnets

Selected by Ilya Kaminsky, to be published by HarperCollins Publishers

LAURA WETHERINGTON OF ROANOKE, VIRGINIA, A Map Predetermined and Chance

Selected by C.S. Giscombe, to be published by Fence Books

To Edith LeBas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgments to the editors of the following magazines, which first published the following poems, often in younger versions.

The Pale-Skinned Catholic Girls Go Topless Sunbathing American Literary Review (forthcoming)

The Sawgrass Women Make Me Nervous Haydens Ferry Review; Cream City Review

In the Bitter Orange Theater, a Child Who Has Never Seen Snow (formerly titled On the Stage of the Bitter Theater, a Child Who Has Never Seen Snow) Haydens Ferry Review

Be a Good Girl, Dont Tell Whiskey Island

The Just-Bled Girl Refuses to Speak Cream City Review

Seventh Grade Science in the Partially Burned Classroom Iron Horse Literary Review

Invitation from My Father to Observe Surgery Iron Horse Literary Review

Song for the Only Other Woman in the Slaughterhouse Verse Wisconsin

Notes on How My Mother Gets into Bed Verse Wisconsin

The Year My Mother and I Mistook the Pool for a Father Verse Wisconsin

Notes on How to Love a Boy Denver Quarterly

On Sunday Nights I Paint the Big Mans Wife Denver Quarterly

I would like to thank Inprint, whose passionate support of writers helped make this book possible.

Thanks to my editor, Paul Slovak, for understanding my vision for this collection and supporting me through its development. Your guidance has been invaluable.

To Quan Barry, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Kuka, Judy Mitchell, and Ron Wallace at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. The gift of the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship allowed this book to grow into adulthood. To my mentors Mark Doty, J. Kastely, Tony Hoagland, Nick Flynn, Barbara Hamby, Erin Belieu, and David Kirby. Thank you for your rigor, your generosity, and your patience.

To the friends who teach me what it means to be a poet: Allison Eir Jenks, Kent Shaw, Glenn Shaheen, Hayan Charara, Craig Beaven, Nancy Reddy, and Erinn Batykefer.

To Tray Shellberg, for his unwavering love and belief in my art.

And to my family, who did not doubt me.

I am mad the way all young girls are mad, with an offering, an offering ...

Anne Sexton, Love Poems

THE JUST-BLED GIRL REFUSES TO SPEAK

The entire red carnation in my mouth.

Like any panicked schoolgirl, Im inarticulate
and constantly introduced

to beautiful things. Today its a doctor
who says, Young La-dy! and demands,

Young La-dy, you cannot keep that garden

in your throat. How will we ask you questions?
How will you sip from the glass of water

and tell us what he did to you? Softly, I slip

the red carnation further into my throat.
There must be hundreds

of ways to be a girl. Im just the kind
who has trouble parting her lips.

NOTES ON HOW TO LOVE A BOY

My mother left handwritten notes
on her sweet gum trees to warn boys
who cut through our backyard.

Wasp Nets. Do Not Enter.
With Scotch tape and spelling error, my mother
told the bad boys of the neighborhood not

to come near me. This was after I,
indolent in a rusted lawn chair, did nothing

when a blond boy flailed, screamed,
swelled down the steps of our pool
with lady-wasps swarming his arms.

Mothers phone calls were followed
by the red yawns of ambulance lights,
followed by the air-conditioned waiting
and the hospital bills she now owed the boys father.

Mother cried over her practiced signature,
struggled to understand her handwriting, the fine
print. Those next few days I did not dare

the backyard, but every chance I got I flitted
into the pool and hid myself
under water. Under wasp wings.

I wanted stingers instead of leg hair.
Instead of legs. I put my mouth to the screen door
and listened for hives. The wasp world

was one that loved boys
as wrong as I did. Why was it that our mission
was to make men less beautiful?

Red. Wrecked. Those insects rushed to his eyelids
without fear. Of all the women
in the world, I find my sisters here.

THE PALE-SKINNED CATHOLIC GIRLS GO TOPLESS SUNBATHING

We could divide,
so easily,
our body parts

by color. At night
we lined up

in the alley behind
the town drugstore
and poured bottles

of whole milk
over our shoulders.

We eased
our hairless bodies

while the mothers
of younger girls

gasped from behind
balcony drapes. They
tossed down

ten-dollar rosaries.
To be sunburned was

an act of God, the triangles
glowing through the blow
of our white skirts.
We believed the world

was with us. How else
would a man know

which parts he could not touch?

SEVENTH GRADE SCIENCE IN THE PARTIALLY BURNED CLASSROOM

The way Sister Mary Dion told us about the calorie made it seem
like something I could believe in. The calorie, she said,

as though it were a red wolf in a forest,

the calorie, she said with wrinkled, gypsied hands,
is a unit of heat. It can raise one gram of water

one degree. Heat. I whispered, I knew it.

I knew there were red wolves in my body, knew
what went past my lips was adding to me.

In the middle of the night, Id wake in sweat

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