Knocking at the Door: Poems about Approaching the Otheris an exciting new compilation of diverse contemporary authors that explores the concept of the Other from all angles: the landscape that surrounds us; the voices of historic, personal and fictional outsiders; the undiscovered corners within ourselves that haunt and heal us. Knocking at the Door delivers innovative writing from emerging and established poets that will have you laughing, crying and questioning the boundaries that separate us from one another.

Poem excerpt I Write You with the Intention of Amendment by Dorinda Wegener Because you were a quart-berry basket filled with silver bells, and I was the dried carrion carried by crows. Because you were a fig tree with new roots, and I, a garden of snakes. Because you were a purse of gold coins, the last land of lands: I have palmed this prayer in my pocket till it turned stone, and you housed this stone in your heart until it turned hardwood. I have orphaned myself from the word mother: the oxeye daisies pass to stiff asters as the bees jump rabbit-foot clover, cone to cone, stitching the season late is how I finished the family sampler to cover the next generation's hope chest. I need to scavenge the mother-daughter sentiment from years of burnt eggs and runny oat, for I am done arguing over tongues and the scorn of steel wool. Matriarch, of the vine which scurries with myths unseen, we have nursed through hunger's red music. I create anew, name from your metronym and now understand; momma, I write you with the intention of amendment, with thrift to thrive penances: green as forgiveness, trepid as love.