The Garden of Dresses Now Available!

It's official!

My second chapbook was just released by Mouthfeel Press and is available for order, a real steal at just $6! You can order directly from the publisher here.

So, what's this crazy book about, anyway?

Now that's a good question! No one answers this better than my blurbers:

 "Whoever dreamed that peeling an orange or selecting a grapefruit could be such a sensuous experience? In these juicy poems of the Rio Grande Valley, Katherine Hoerth invites the reader into a world dripping with pleasure and delight." --- Steven Schneider, author of Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives, Prairie Air Show, and Unexpected Guests

"The Garden of Dresses is the sexual awakening not only of the speaker(s), but of objects, characters, places. Katherine’s poems relentlessly make the readers come up close to the images, and, more than read the poems, they savor them."--Laura Cesarco Eglin, author of Sastreria and Llamar al aqua por su nombre.

"These poems speak to a complicated femininity, ancient and modern, dangerous and vulnerable, passionate as a lioness or a butterfly...here are moments in the journey of the poet's ripening--from ripening body and sexuality to ripening compassion and awareness..."-- ire'ne lara silva, author of furia.

 And while I'm at it, wouldn't you love a little sample? Ok, here's the collection's namesake poem, "The Garden of Dresses"

 

Garden of Dresses

I step across the threshold of Eden

into this eve’s paradise, the light

illuminates the blushing temptations,

hanging from branches above. Long ago

I denied myself the taste

of pomegranate on my lips

and let my flesh give way

to rib bone, so I could stand

naked, in front of my own gaze.

I reach up, pluck a piece

of little black paradise

from the vine. It bursts

into bloom as the zipper opens

and invites me inside.

I pull the silky skin across

my body, up my sanded toothpick

legs, empty hipbones, hourglass

waist. And that forbidden fruit

caresses my flesh covered bones.

My nipples perk as silk

glides over, and I slip my shoulders

inside.  I stare at how we look

together – my Louis Vuiton

wrapped tight around

me, and I can’t help but long

for closure. I grasp

at the zipper, just out of reach.

 Adam –

I call,

I still need you

to zip me up.

Poem first published in Ellipsis Literature and Art, Spring 2012