Lizzie, Speak by Kailey Tedesco $15

Paperback, 68 pages

Lizzie, Speak is a conjuring of Lizzie Borden, the woman who was suspected of murdering her parents with an axe. Each poem invokes Lizzie’s spirit, trying to parse out the many difficulties that Lizzie faced during her time through the lense of a modern speaker, questioning maybe why, or even if she actually committed those murders.

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What others are saying about Tedesco’s Lizzie, Speak:

"Kailey Tedesco is a poet compelled by resonance. The poems within Lizzie, Speak, read with the cadence of spells, each like its own intoxicating cosmos of sound. In “lizzie new age / lizzie new wave” you feel yourself tripping down the haunted ghost path of language, stumbling towards something deadly yet tantalizing much like the collection’s titular assumed murderer muse, Lizzie Borden—'goat-milk butters my dialect / heartfelt i am lounging on plum-sward / & these waves thieve / my shoes / something about this ghost has gone…’ Tedesco conjures Borden to speak as if not only to be finally given a chance to tell her story—’Papa denies me a new  / set of pens’—but for all those “dangerous women” of the then and now to finally ‘harvest [their own] ghosts  / from the holes  / that caused them.’ Lizzie, Speak is a book about the authority of language and the ghosts that inhabit it. As Dickinson once said, ‘One need not be a chamber to be haunted’ and as Tedesco proves here, haunting takes many forms."   

-Trista Edwards, associate editor of Luna Luna Magazine

"Kailey Tedesco’s Lizzie, Speak is not merely a collection of poetry, but a conjuring, an invocation, a communion with Lizzie Borden herself. By voices, sometimes distinctly Kailey, sometimes Lizzie, I am guided through this séance of a new confessional until, ultimately, the line between the two becomes vague, itself a ghost without time or presence, “to speak / the language of saints, protected.” From the very beginning, I can feel my fingers on the planchette as these poems reveal –– letter by word by line –– a spirit, a history, an identity. Lizzie speaks through Tedesco, who has given us a beautiful portrait that is not only haunting and ethereal, but also temporal, intimate, and true."​

-Angelo Colavita, author of Flowersonnets

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KAILEY TEDESCO

Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing) and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press). She is the co-founder of Rag Queen Periodical and an associate editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Currently, she teaches literature and writing in Bethlehem, PA and co-curates Philly's A Witch's Craft reading series. You can find her work featured in Electric Literature, Prelude, fields, Bone Bouquet Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Grimoire, Phoebe Journal, and others. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com or follow @kaileytedesco.