Sixteen Rabbits by Maryan Nagy Captan

Winner of the Spring 2022 Host Publications Chapbook Prize Featuring an introduction by Brittanie Sterner. Sixteen Rabbits transports us through dream, memory, place and time, by opening portals that exist in the liminal space between two worlds. These meditative journeys spring from a deep nostalgia, and one of the most urgent expressions of longing in Captan’s work is that of the displaced, yearning for home. Through displacement, religious persecution, and trauma, these poems come shimmering forth ‘in full-bodied reverie’ seeking divine wisdom which echoes throughout Sixteen Rabbits like a summons–to see this moment, this place, this life–in all of its enchantment. As Captan writes: ‘reverence, / I am writing with reverence.’ "Meditation in Austin, Texas" from Sixteen Rabbits:  Dawn came late, the daysingle-hued, your body like mine.I fish a bee from your coffee,the doves coo past noon. Here,the sun sits like a hat, and Marsis a placeholder for everything round.A woodpecker scales