Until the Surface Breaks

poems by

Patsy Kisner

~64 pages, ISBN:  978-1-964277-24-0, $14 (+ shipping)

Release Date: January 2025

The Advance Sale Discount on this title has expired. For those who prefer to pay by check, the price is $19/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412. 

PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.

Patsy Kisner‘s poems have also appeared in Untelling, Still: The Journal, Appalachian Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the Women Speak Anthologies, and the University Press of Kentucky anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky. She and her husband, Phil, live on a farm in West Virginia. They are the parents of Mary, now deceased, and Maria, who lives with her family nearby. Her poetry collection, Last Days of an Old Dog, and poetry chapbook, Inside the Horse’s Eye, are available from Finishing Line Press.

“Longing is always/ hungry” says poet Patsy Kisner in her heartrending collection Until the Surface Breaks, a book filled with muzzles and beaks, hills, creeks, furrows, prayers, and death—the overarching shadow that “scratches/ at [her] door.” I greatly admire the economy of this poet, how with so few words she is able to deftly share her rural life experiences, each carefully crafted line rich with texture, insight and reverence. ~Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, Author of Dirt Songs

These brief poems in Patsy Kisner’s collection look deceptively easy, but here is a book bursting with astonishing images and sumptuous sounds despite the tightly measured lines. A farmer faces loss, grief, and her own mortality while doing the most ordinary things: feeding animals, checking weeds, snapping peas. But in Kisner’s hands, these acts become extraordinary revelations from a gifted poet who has composed a canticle of praise for her land and people. ~Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer

AFTER DEATH

The wind sweeps
the woods, breaks free
the broken branches,

while inside the barn
a new calf wobbles
to its feet.

At the garden
sugar snaps wait
for me to pick—

each perfect pea
inside the pods
an assurance
I can keep.

FRESH

Last night
the moon pulled
the tide
to somewhere
it didn’t know
how to go.

Mary says
death is
like that.

THE FARM

Something’s always
needing feeding—
beaks and snouts,
muzzles with sturdy molars
used for grinding grain.

Some days I feel
like I’m breaking
off pieces of my
own self, giving
too much of me away.

At dark
I open books,
read the cravings
my loves have
sent to me
on paper. I study
the lines,
the perfect diction,
the turn of a word
in ways I
could not think.
I read until
I’m full, then
add ink
to my own pages.

In the morning
I’ll start
over, filling all
those mouths
with one type
of seed
or another.

AT THE CREEK

A still pool
mirrors trees,
drooping willows
and white-barked
sycamores.

I forget
for a moment
that what’s
beneath the water
still moves—

until the surface
breaks
and a wilderness
leaps out
like a fish.