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You can access Workz from previous TGAP iterations here.

Snarl Back a bitch into any corner, and Her scissor-knife pearls come out. This is more than a threat. A clamorous, Brazen carillon; every word Covered in silted enamel - coffee stains and a salad fork chip - But each is carefully polished, Floss between white spaces, A thesaurus. There are so many ways To say father. Each connotation A ransom for your love. Spit through the venom. Do not Give up and recede into Tall trees still standing. A coterie To hide me, my pups, show

Garden of Empty Promise The soil is almost too good. These Gourds will take over the field. Never enough bellies for all that Sinewy spice. Take a picture of your Accidental harvest. Post for all The hungry world to browse. That you Have too much and them, never, Enough.

Colonize II Fist to cuffs, you make the laws; Clutched now, all of us, in your claws. Cool girls pose, so we fit in, Even when doing such leads to sin. Make believe everything’s all for you, And on my finger that manipulative jewel. Duels internal, “This is not right.” But you’ve got the brawn; Always win the fight.

Colonize I A Golden Shovel after Margaret Atwood Time will ease guilt; you will not remember whether The plot you have built your house upon, the Windows soaking in false sun, is wilderness That soothed another; is Someone else’s real Estate. Sweep floors or Wash those panes. Not Caring depends Upon a brain sponge on Hyper-drive, who Thinks she is better and lives In her stolen home there. MA’s original line from Margaret Atwood’s “Circle Game:” “Whether the wilderness is rea

Our Holy and Obsolete Symbols II ( From MA’s “Eulogy for the Giant Tortoises” ) Try to anatomize all this, I dare you. There is no clear-cut diagnosis, No matter how many guts You arrange on the metal table. Impious toddler jockeying a rented Feller buncher. Our Constitution rolled and bound, For now. Stowed under a cenotaph, glistening Pink marble; a resplendent Lion guards for now. Half the country Smashing bottles at his paws.

Our Holy and Obsolete Symbols I ( From M.A.’s “Eulogy for the Giant Tortoises” ) With someone so suboptimal in charge - Taking a feller buncher To everything that matters - you Recall the schoolyard bully, Holding all under his hideous Gaze as the teacher looked away. One cannot make the false True just by claiming it enough. Except in minds who lack Wisdom to recognize wrong.

Oh, Canada Innocuous mass above our heads, Giant kitten sleeping on my pillow Protecting me from dread. My Mother left New Brunswick at five; But to hear her, you would think She had lived there all her life. An escape plan for Handmaids, And me. Atwood’s Eden, and my Great grandmother’s brownstone On Germaine. White deer at Fundy Park an allure, a promise. You are not our enemy To the north, but half of me. My heart pulled apart like a sinewed Stone. Anatomized and clever. M

Another Poem about Breaking Up Inspired by M. A.’s “Circle Game” Dance around this circle game; [not the drain, not yet] Rings around rosies, everybody Knows, is a song about death. Threat inspires vaccinations, But, there is none in our inventory For this heartache. Yet. Every February 14th just throwing The meltdown into your beautiful Face. Paper hearts, doilies, tiny cards. So gross. [Rip this beating tissue out of my weak-boned chest.] Tear it up, man. Sprinkle The piece

Airport Whiskey for JSW This grief is the non-profit tote bag slung over my shoulder As we shop Newbury Street and Every plate of carefully curated conference breakfast That we will never get to eat. It is us zig-zagging the traffic of Nashville Rushing to the airport gate and The leisurely morning mimosas, The real reason we were late. It is curbside post-clubbing slices of pizza Shared under the Austin city lights and You revealing the news about L.A. Before we knew how the

The Murmuration Always we in amazement watch The cyclone black and glimmering, Starlings flock and fall In formation. How can I Live with such a heart? Poets always ask this question. We try to heal with words What is broken beyond fixing. The sky darkens in the evening; They are flying away, As we have forced them. My chimney is blocked - you Cannot come in - but also, There is no fire to warm My bleeding feet.

A Fresh Pencil for a Fresh Hell “ For years, the belief that poetry is here to help us traveled with me everywhere, tucked into the pockets of suitcases, backpacks. ” ~Naomi Shihab Nye Sharpened to perfection, this Natural Blackwing, with the hope That all our fears are Wrong. That the coming storm Will blot it all out. Erase it, Somehow. Snowflakes shut Down roads, so only our pens Can travel. Shut down contempt, So that our new neighbors Might ride on

Heather has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember and has been filling notebooks with it since she was a teenager. One of...