[brennatwohy]

I was curious if you'll be going on a tour soon. I apologize for not wording that as an ask.

Hi! 

I’ve been getting a lot of messages about when I’ll be touring/putting out new work. 

The short answer is: not in the near future. 

Writing and performing poetry has been such a gift in my life, and has nurtured me as a person in countless large and small ways. Writing about my grief helped me begin to heal. Writing about my trauma reminded me I am not alone in it. 

In the last year, though, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a voice in our current society. What it means to use my voice meaningfully, especially as a cisgender white woman. 

I work in the criminal court system. Every day, I see human beings locked into cages. They are predominantly poor. They are predominantly people of color. They are grandfathers and sons and artists and addicts and community leaders and people of faith. Their stories are heartbreaking and heartwarming and largely unheard. Their stories are not mine to tell through poetry.

For now, this is where I’ll be spending my time. I’m finishing up school, and working in the courts, and doing my best to use my voice to make change. 

I want to talk about mass incarceration. I want to talk about the predatory systems of money bail and probation and offender registries. I want to talk about mandatory minimums and the fact that we allow children to be sentenced to life in prison. 

So, I expect to keep writing. It’s likely to look much different than what you’ve seen from me before. If this is the last thing you read of mine – thank you for the support and encouragement that you’ve given me and my poetry. It has been such a blessing to have my words on your screens, in your homes, and in your hands. 

[brennatwohy]

MORBIDDA DESTINY TO KAREN BREWER

Sweet girl, you think witches are like dragons, born with fire in our mouths?

Surely you know what it is to put on a costume & fall asleep wearing it, wake up twenty years later with a pot on your stove & call it a cauldron. Karen, you are not the only one terrified of women growing old alone –  call it my burden or my magic, either way, you all look away when I dare come out in the daylight.

Womanhood  is learning how to witch yourself in slow motion.

How to pull the power from their loud & empty bodies.

Let them say your name like a curse, sing it back as an incantation.

Let them call you cold as you conjure fire from grit & the scraps they leave behind for you, 

& I will gift you this, Karen– I will be the scariest thing you can think of. I pray I am only thing that ever haunts you.

[brennatwohy]

@netflix definitely got it right with Morbidda Destiny in the BSC revival. 

[brennatwohy]

Hello brenna! I was wondering if swallowtail had any new poems that you have never published in any books before? Because i already have your two previous books (zig zag girl and forgive me my salt) and was worried that if i bought swallowtail it would just have all of the poems ive already read :)

Hi! Great question. Because my first two books (Zig-Zag Girl and Forgive Me My Salt) were self-published, I took them out of print when I had the opportunity to work through Button Poetry to publish Swallowtail. So Swallowtail is primarily a collection of poems that were previously self-published, but it also contains three poems that haven’t been published before. 

Thanks for your support of my work, it means so much to me! 

[heavensghost]

Brenna Twohy

[heavensghost]

Brenna Twohy

[buttonpoetry]

We have built cathedrals out of spite and splintered bone, of course they aren’t pretty, nothing holy ever is.

Brenna Twohy, from Swallowtail  (via buttonpoetry)

[buttonpoetry]

I will hope your next good love lasts the rest of your life.

Brenna Twohy, from Swallowtail (via buttonpoetry)

& I do. I do. 

[camreadthatcirca2015]

grief is not a feeling, but a neighborhood.

this is where I come from. everyone I love still lives there.

Brenna Twohy, A Coworker Asks Me If I Am Sad, Still

[buttonpoetry]

Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake. Girlhood is growing fruit around cyanide. It will never be yours for the swallowing.

Brenna Twohy, from Swallowtail  (via buttonpoetry)

[buttonpoetry]

Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake. Girlhood is growing fruit around cyanide. It will never be yours for the swallowing.

Brenna Twohy, from Swallowtail (via buttonpoetry)

[buttonpoetry]

I did not bury the hatchet. I have the hatchet in my hands. I am building myself a new house.

Brenna Twohy, from Swallowtail (via buttonpoetry)

[buttonpoetry]

“I am alive if alive means to be a moth caught in the hands of some childish grief.”

— Donte Collins, from Autopsy

[buttonpoetry]

“A group of dead friends is called a memory. A grouping of grave robbers, a scalpel. I know of a surgery that removes nothing, rearranges vertebrae into a necklace of names speaking into the dark asking me to join them.”

— Michael Lee, from The Only Worlds We Know 

[brennatwohy]

A few hundred feet off Highway 18, about halfway between Portland and my mom’s house, there’s this pickup truck stuck up in the limbs of an oak tree. 

My friend Zak pointed it out: I wonder how that got there. 

I had made the drive less than a month before without noticing it. 

My mom was out of town for the weekend. I took my boyfriend to finally see the Oregon coast. We drank red wine from the bottle and fell asleep together on one couch. In the morning, I couldn’t figure out the coffee machine, so he drove to the next town over and brought back paper cups with a picture of a pirate on the side. We went to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum and bought trashy souvenirs from the gift shop and I said to him everything in this moment is exactly perfect and six days later my brother was dead.



My first semester of law school, I had a mental health crisis. 

 I would sit in class and list things: this desk is real. the highlighter is real. my left thigh has a freckle above the knee so that’s real. 

I have hundreds of photos from those first few months, all from my own apartment. Pictures of the sinks turned off. The stove knobs. The freezer, closed. My key in the door lock. 



Oregon oaks are marcescent – the leaves change color at the same time as the trees around them, but don’t fall. The dead leaves hang on all winter. When the wind picks up, you would swear it’s raining by the noise of it. 



Before he died, my brother drove up to Sacramento for an apprenticeship with a guy who made knives. I don’t know everything that happened there, but I know most of the ending.

All the outlet covers pried off all the walls. 

I know that’s where you keep the cameras, he said. I’m not a moron. 

They’re going to keep him 72 hours, my mom said. At least 72 hours.



We never talked about mental illness. Just sat next to each other in silence for decades. Fiddling with the car radio. Up in the tree.



Even at the worst of it, I was surrounded by resources. This is a privilege, undoubtedly. It was also profoundly unhelpful. 

Career counselors and professors talked about income potential and market desirability and I pressed my thumbs as deep as they would go in the spaces between my ribs. 

What does it matter how fast I can move, I thought, if I can’t get the hell out of this tree?

I didn’t need affirmations about the ways it gets better. I didn’t need vague promises of support; of “just let me know what I can do.” I needed someone to bring me a fucking ladder.

Someone did. “I will make you a doctor’s appointment right now,” she said. “I will drive you there myself.” 



We don’t need to be louder or more persistent or more earnest about helping – we need to be more specific. We need to make it as easy as saying yes, because saying yes is hard enough.

My go-to question for a struggling friend used to be, “What can I do for you?” I don’t ask that anymore. 

I ask, “Can I order dinner delivered to your apartment?” I ask, “Is there an email you need to send that I can draft?” “Can I take your dog for a walk?” “Can I find a therapist nearby that takes your insurance?” 

Can I get you a ladder? 



I was back on Highway 18 right before New Year’s. It was an unusually cold winter for Oregon, the schools had already run out of snow days. We drove at about fifteen miles per hour, leaning forward to see through the fog. 

But there was that tree. Even in the frost, the leaves held fast. Withered. Brittle. 

Hanging on. 

[brennatwohy]

My Partner Leaves Me & Buzzfeed Encourages Me To Try Pilates

To buy a new set of sheets. I tell my friends loudly, I will not wallow as I purchase $40 of cereal marshmallows from the internet in a transaction I will later come to regret both for the resulting identity theft but also because I really wanted those cereal marshmallows and don’t know if I can handle another disappointment. Buzzfeed says, go to a new bar and flirt with a stranger. I get stoned with my mother’s friends and watch the classic 1984 breakup film The Terminator, not-not-crying as Arnold takes the screen, all smoke and metal, and what more could you ask for than this? to be huge and loud and indestructible? listen, I know exactly how too-much I am, I have lived in this machine my whole life, this is not the first time love has left me scratching at my skin, praying to withstand just one more burning, Buzzfeed believes I would benefit from a meal plan service. I pause the movie to curate a plate of Oreos, Waffles & Syrup on a bed of Double Stuf, then carefully place the Fireworks Oreos in the garbage where they belong, because they are just second-rate Pop Rocks and I deserve better than that shit. Onscreen, Arnold tosses a guy from a phone booth, flips through the listings until he finds her, and as he pulls up to the driveway, I am the only one holding my breath. Arnold knocks on the door and it opens, he says Sarah Connor? and she says, yes, (her only line in the movie) and then he shoots her like twenty-two times, and moves on to the next Sarah Connor in the phone book. Six months ago, my friend Megan asked me, do you think you would marry him? and I laughed into the phone, said that would be a disaster, meant, that would be a disaster, but I’d do it in a heartbeat if he asked, meant, of course, I’m not the one he’s looking for, but goddamn  if it didn’t sound like it when he said my name

[brennatwohy]

I am so overjoyed to announce that @buttonpoetry is releasing a book of my poems this fall!! Signed pre-orders are on sale now.  Thank you, thank you, thank you to every person who read the first drafts, every person who believed in my voice as a storyteller, every person who told me I could achieve this bright, bright dream. I am so remarkably lucky.

[brennatwohy]

A few hundred feet off Highway 18, about halfway between Portland and my mom’s house, there’s this pickup truck stuck up in the limbs of an oak tree. 

My friend Zak pointed it out: I wonder how that got there. 

I had made the drive less than a month before without noticing it. 

My mom was out of town for the weekend. I took my boyfriend to finally see the Oregon coast. We drank red wine from the bottle and fell asleep together on one couch. In the morning, I couldn’t figure out the coffee machine, so he drove to the next town over and brought back paper cups with a picture of a pirate on the side. We went to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum and bought trashy souvenirs from the gift shop and I said to him everything in this moment is exactly perfect and six days later my brother was dead.



My first semester of law school, I had a mental health crisis. 

 I would sit in class and list things: this desk is real. the highlighter is real. my left thigh has a freckle above the knee so that’s real. 

I have hundreds of photos from those first few months, all from my own apartment. Pictures of the sinks turned off. The stove knobs. The freezer, closed. My key in the door lock. 



Oregon oaks are marcescent – the leaves change color at the same time as the trees around them, but don’t fall. The dead leaves hang on all winter. When the wind picks up, you would swear it’s raining by the noise of it. 



Before he died, my brother drove up to Sacramento for an apprenticeship with a guy who made knives. I don’t know everything that happened there, but I know most of the ending.

All the outlet covers pried off all the walls. 

I know that’s where you keep the cameras, he said. I’m not a moron. 

They’re going to keep him 72 hours, my mom said. At least 72 hours.



We never talked about mental illness. Just sat next to each other in silence for decades. Fiddling with the car radio. Up in the tree.



Even at the worst of it, I was surrounded by resources. This is a privilege, undoubtedly. It was also profoundly unhelpful. 

Career counselors and professors talked about income potential and market desirability and I pressed my thumbs as deep as they would go in the spaces between my ribs. 

What does it matter how fast I can move, I thought, if I can’t get the hell out of this tree?

I didn’t need affirmations about the ways it gets better. I didn’t need vague promises of support; of “just let me know what I can do.” I needed someone to bring me a fucking ladder.

Someone did. “I will make you a doctor’s appointment right now,” she said. “I will drive you there myself.” 



We don’t need to be louder or more persistent or more earnest about helping – we need to be more specific. We need to make it as easy as saying yes, because saying yes is hard enough.

My go-to question for a struggling friend used to be, “What can I do for you?” I don’t ask that anymore. 

I ask, “Can I order dinner delivered to your apartment?” I ask, “Is there an email you need to send that I can draft?” “Can I take your dog for a walk?” “Can I find a therapist nearby that takes your insurance?” 

Can I get you a ladder? 



I was back on Highway 18 right before New Year’s. It was an unusually cold winter for Oregon, the schools had already run out of snow days. We drove at about fifteen miles per hour, leaning forward to see through the fog. 

But there was that tree. Even in the frost, the leaves held fast. Withered. Brittle. 

Hanging on.