Three Hands None

Denise Bergman

Fearless, unsparing, Denise Bergman probes a violent, sexual assault to expose the personal and social consequences of ungovernable, masculinist culture. “Home is the coat that can’t keep me warm or dry/ buttons and holes I can’t align,” the poet declares, struggling to rebuild a coherent self. A book-length narrative poem, Three Hands None reveals how “materials for this story” also account for domestic and international tragedies: “the single-eyed babies born in Fallujah” and “strip-mined flattened hills.” A single sequence—of narrative, fragment, and image—this original work will leave you breathless, changed.

—Robin Becker, author of The Black Bear Inside Me