"Grief, well-trod territory though it can be, is made wholly original here with Johnson’s narrative poems, and her fiction writer’s eye for salient detail."
Cancer Voodoo, a chapbook by Melissa C. Johnson, is forthcoming from Diode this March. Look for the book at AWP '22.
About the chapbook, author N. West Moss says—
"This elegiac collection, largely about the death of the author’s mother and grandmother, is filled with breathtaking moments of understated humanity. The catalog of items found beneath her deceased mother’s bed included “dozens of refrigerator magnets” with “no metal to adhere to,” driving home how purposeless our possessions are when we are no longer there to animate them. In these small moments, Johnson subtly brings forth the pathos of losing the people we have loved. Grief, well-trod territory though it can be, is made wholly original here with Johnson’s narrative poems, and her fiction writer’s eye for salient detail. “When someone is dying in a small / Southern town, the past comes / back and visits – bringing food.” What a delight to know the people she has loved, and to feel how much I wish I had known them."
— N. West Moss is the author of the memoir Flesh & Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life (Algonquin 2021), and the short story collection The Subway Stops at Bryant Park (Leapfrog 2017). Her middle grade novel is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
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