Melissa Newman-Evans’s Comments

All three of these poems come from a time when I had just moved from Boston, my home of almost 10 years, to follow my husband, Kevin Spak, 2,000 miles to Denver for his dream job. As a freelancer in a new city with almost no friends, I was in my house alone most of the time and wasn’t seeing many people. I spent a lot of time just with myself and my cat, and a lot of it felt like I was in stasis, waiting for something to happen to me. “Staving Off Eventual Death” definitely stems from that, as does “How to Bake Bread in America,” which is more an indictment of the reasons I got into bread-baking during this period. And, of course, “Hey Mama Where’d You Get That Ass” comes out of the fact that most of the in-person interactions I had during this time were either with grocery store employees or anonymous men trying to figure my butt out. When you haven’t spoken to anyone you don’t share a bed with in several days, having a stranger ask you about your ass is really jarring. I couldn’t help but respond in some way when the question is that absurd.

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