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      Wesleyan University Press | Middletown, Connecticut

      Wesleyan Poetry

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2018 Kerri Webster

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

      Typeset in Sina

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Webster, Kerri, 1971–author.

      Title: The trailhead / Kerri Webster.

      Description: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, 2017. | Series: Wesleyan poetry | Includes bibliographical references. |

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017043088 (print) | LCCN 2017043317 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578129 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819578112 (cloth : alk. paper)

      Classification: LCC PS3623.E3974 (ebook) | LCC PS3623.E3974 A6 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043088

      5 4 3 2 1

      Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications, in which some of the poems in this volume first appeared:

      Anthropoid: “Hulls Gulch,” “Winter Of (And I Took the Chemise Off)”

      At Length: “The Night Grove”

      Better: “Skins”

      BOAAT: “The Spinster Project,” “Of Deborah,” “Wilderness, Poetry, Sex”

      Denver Quarterly: “One Eye Dilated”

      Grimoire: “On the Nature of Righteous Action,” “Towards an Ethical Religiosity,” “Reasonable Miracles,” “The Trailhead,” “Invert Sky,” “Vanitas”

      Guernica: “Corpse Flower”

      Los Angeles Review: “This Is Manifest”

      Newfound: “Solastalgia,” “Swan/Not Swan”

      Poetry: “Hermeneutics”

      Gratitude to the Idaho Commission on the Arts for a grant that helped in the writing of this book.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      Front cover illustrations: Deer and Elk Anters © @snehitdesign. Pebbles, [email protected].

      CONTENTS

       PART I

       3 Hermeneutics

       4 Hill Walk

       6 Hulls Gulch

       10 The Night Grove

       14 River Walk

       PART II

       21 Winter Of (And I Took the Chemise Off)

       23 Conversion Narrative

       29 Of Deborah

       31 Reasonable Miracles

       32 The Spinster Project

       PART III

       39 This Is Manifest

       40 Swan/Not Swan

       42 One Eye Dilated

       44 Towards an Ethical Religiosity

       45 Skins

       48 Invert Sky

       PART IV

       51 Wilderness, Poetry, Sex

       55 Solastalgia

       58 Corpse Flower

       59 On the Nature of Righteous Action

       62 The Trailhead

       63 Vanitas

       67 Notes