The Mother Wart

Author: Dylan Krieger  Publisher: Vegetarian Alcoholic Press (2019) The Mother Wart is a book of prose poems loosely based around the tenets of the Church of Euthanasia, whose only commandment—for both ethical and practical reasons—is "thou shalt not breed." Looking beyond the movement's environmental and social goals, The Mother Wart delves into an autobiographical meditation on early memories and associations with motherhood, childbirth, infancy, and female sexuality, emphasizing the importance of early childhood trauma in the decision to abstain from having children of one's own. In its thick fog of sound play, close-set cycles of internal rhyme evoke a nursery rhyme starting to spin off-kilter, a grade-school chant turned violent and unpredictable. This is the version of the fairy tale in which the witch wins. But here, the witch is also mother, the origins of life transformed into a sign of virus (the wart). The grotesque, therefore, figures heavily throughout these poems, especia