The Wynona Poems
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Down and Out  A Scene Not Made A Christmas Story Isobars Human Resources Wynona’s Hiatus Hibernaculum Self-Checkout Deleted Scenes |
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This group of poems is part of a full-length manuscript, tentatively titled Welcome to Wynona, which centers on a woman named Wynona Stone and various characters from her life, including her family (referred to as “the Stones”), her dead friend Nancy, her cosmetologist, and the local weatherman.
“Wynona Stone is having trouble broaching”: each of the manuscript’s three sections begins with this line. Between her job (she’s an interpreter at a small-town heritage museum) and family, her fixations and obligations, Wynona can’t seem to get a handle on the present tense. Often at odds with the people around her, in her free time Wynona watches soap operas and makes miniature clay models, staging scenes from her life. Though this is not the hobby of a totally sane person, the models offer Wynona an outlet for memory and desire—and a more manageable scale. As one poem puts it, “With so much much / Wynona wishes she could just adjust / the magnitude.” Writing poems, I feel the same way sometimes: that’s why I made her.