Dylan Krieger’s collection, no ledge left to love, is the recipient of the Ping-Pong Free Press poetry prize of 2017, chosen by judge and poetry badass, Brian Henry. It is my extreme pleasure to share with you a sneak peek–one of my favorite poems out of this fascinating and essential collection, release date: December 1, 2017.
divine debris
out of the dead leaves, i motion myself sick before the world. little obliterated bits of god, raining down onto this globular water-logged orb. before the fornicating of subatomic fractals even started, the last ledge had already parted from the abyss, rendering a semblance of solidity out of a hologram of steam. and suddenly, the backs of all the elephants and turtles grew heavy, and the amoeba split in two until a multitude of blue lagoons began to spit up monkeys from their goo. maybe evolution ends here, where the creature turns shrewd enough to see its own doom, lets go of that last ledge he always thought would see him through, and propels himself downward into the chasm’s mouth, the floating man falling at long last toward the knowledge that there is no ‘he’ to bottle or bog down with cogs and gallows, only the sorcery of swamp and hollow, and the infinite question: what follows?
About Dylan Krieger:
Regarding the creation of her book Krieger writes, “As the titles in its contents suggest, “no ledge left to love” is a poetry project that reimagines and challenges the frameworks of Western philosophical thought experiments, especially with respect to gender categories, moral certitude, and diachronic identity. Each poem focuses on a different thought experiment in analytical philosophy, from Plato’s allegory of the cave to Nagel’s spider in a urinal. Recognizing that Western philosophy—like most all academic disciplines—has been largely dominated by wealthy straight white men, “no ledge” attempts to dismantle the reductive binaries and disembodied logic of the analytical philosophical vernacular, emphasizing instead the robust physicality and potent mutability of the bodies required to convey its lofty ideas.
Dylan Krieger is a genderqueer feminist who currently works as a trade magazine editor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she earned her MFA in creative writing at LSU and twice directed the annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival. Before studying with Lara Glenum and Laura Mullen at LSU, she lived in northern Indiana for the bulk of her young life and studied poetry with Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Goransson at Notre Dame. Her first book of poems, “Giving Godhead,” was released earlier this year by Delete Press and received an glowing review in the New York Times Book Review.
Featured image: Stewart Ferebee Photography
