How to Get out of a 20-Year Hole

By Kristina Andersson Bicher

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It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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a prison spoon, sharp teeth, a rosary
and chicken feet, a compass rose, magnetic blood
TNT, equanimity, and a diamond file for a finger;
jeweler’s glass, rubber suit, passport stamp 
kick in the ass, the right shoes, the North Star
a shiv and an ampule of musk; sulfuric acid, 
wooden mask, litmus test, laughing gas, atom bomb 
doctor’s note, hammer of Thor, a metaphor,
a stronger rope, a longer hope, a golden tongue
le mot juste, safer roost, divining rod 
echolocation and a sleeve of magical staves.

But in order to exit, I first had to step over the body.

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Kristina Andersson Bicher is the author of She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020) and Heat, Sob, Lily (forthcoming MadHat Press 2025), as well as the translator of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s full-length collection, I walk around gathering up my garden for the night (Bitter Oleander Press 2020). Her poetry appears in such journals as AGNI, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry, Plume, Denver Quarterly, and Narrative. Her translations and nonfiction have appeared in The Atlantic, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review, Asymptote, and Writer’s Chronicle, among others.

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