Janine Certo
Janine Certo is the author of five books, most recently, O Body of Bliss, winner of the Longleaf Press Book Contest in Poetry (Longleaf Press, 2022), and Elixir, winner of both the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (New American Press and Bordighera Press, 2021). A winner of Nimrod International Journal’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, recent poems appear in the Cincinnati Review and Poetry Northwest.
Reading List
Saint Michael, the Serpent & the Red Lobster
Women should not adorn the body with ornaments, Peter says, but in the mid-80s, every Madonna bangle & hoop was a tunnel out of Western PA. I could’ve piked & dove; ducked, tucked, & rolled through their glint. Timothy cautions to exercise the womanly body profiteth little; only godliness is profitable. I felt God […]
Breaking My Father Out of the Hospice Unit to Go to the Italian Market
Even the magnolia was incredulous at its bloom, the glass doors agape behind us as we rolled him out, still gowned, onto the blinding sidewalk. Dad’s chair barely fit down the aisles of amaretti, olives, each pasta shape its own regioni, the small store crowded and warm, the owner accommodating with his nods. We thought […]