A Slice from the Cake Made of Air, Paperback

a slice from the cake made of air processes the physical and mental trauma of abortion coupled with the desires for sexual and emotional love against a backdrop of contemporary culture--with all the sexualization that comes with race, gender, and landscape. From front to back the book is wound through with a single poem whose language is permuted, translated, and retranslated (from English to English) as it cycles around abortion, both asking "what artifact / do I resemble" and stating "small love / small / you failed it / in person." The poems directly confront the sexual self ("This isn't a real orgasm, a real patellar fatigue") and take up the thesis abstract as a malleable form for interrogating the inevitable intersections and overlaps of brains and bodies. Sexy and volatile, a slice from the cake made of air winds over and through itself, with no conclusions or solutions for the mess of living in the world.

About the Author:

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is a 2014 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship. Her first book, But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise, was selected by Claudia Rankine as the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award winner and published by Red Hen Press in 2012. Her chapbook, cutthroat glamours, was published by Phantom Books in 2013. Her works have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Callaloo, Cream City Review, Court Green, DIAGRAM, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, jubilat, Mid-American Review, Narrative Magazine, OH NO, Saltfront, Subtropics, Sou'wester, Tupelo Quarterly, and more. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Utah.