Christie's first chapbook, Last to Leave, can be purchased directly from our distributor via this link. 

Christie's debut full-length collection, Finding Fruit Among Thorns, will be released in June 2016.

Christie Grimes is the author of Last to Leave. She is originally from Alvin, Texas. Her prose and poetry can be seen in Passages North, Patterson Literary Review, and other journals and anthologies. She teaches creative writing, toasts the sunshine, and lives with her husband and too many cats in a small town. Find out more at www.christiegrimes.com

Christie's full-length collection, Finding Fruit Among Thorns, will be released in June 2016. 

Praise for Last to Leave:

"In Last to Leave, Christie Grimes two-steps through the heat and seasoning of Texas and embraces rural northern New York in poems that sweat and chuckle, question and speak of resolve. These poems are familiar with salsa and barrooms, classrooms, and warm kitchens. These are rites of passage painted in language lush with flavor and craft. "

Georgia A. Popoff
Author of Psalter: The Agnostic's Book of Common Curiosities


Marie Antoinette Opens a Pastry Shop in Paris
 
She calls it simply Marie’s,
fills her large storefront window
with red velvet cupcakes,
raspberry crescents, cherry turnovers,
loves the clash between sweet and tart
the way it cleaves her tongue in two
seems like it will linger forever
but in a moment,
just the time it takes to blink
or swallow,
it is gone.
Only the remnant
of a seed
or the soft jelly coating
remain.
 
People come through the door
ask for coconut crèmes,
flourless chocolate tortes,
lemon meringue
but she refuses to supply them.
“Eat these cakes I have made,” she tells them
as she waves her hand at the window.
There are strawberry preserve cookies,
boysenberry crepes and cranberry blintzes.
 
She can’t help it.
She loves working the red fruit between her hands,
the way the juices stain her cuticle beds,
deepen the creases of her palms.
When she is baking,
she licks the spoons and spatulas
sucks on her fingertips,
savors the smooth syrup of the crushed berries,
the way they pop in her mouth
or burst under her fork,
darken the side of her bowl.
And, after they are all in the oven,
as she scoops the batter into her mouth
she always runs the edge of the spoon along her lip
indulging in the short slide of steel.


House Special
 
Someone once told me the difference
between love and lust was the difference
between good scotch and three pitchers of Pabst.
Then again, I never could appreciate
the top shelf $28 sips of Glenlivet
that men in suits held up to the light
capturing a prism of amber jeweled tones
glinting across the polished oak bar.
And those cheap tubs of PBR
or house rum and cokes 
filled my belly with laughter and courage 
and burned just fine as I talked
to old farmers and cowboys,
the guys who had guns in their trucks
and horses at home. They talked of feral hogs
knocking over their barbed wire fences,
and the way snappers haven’t hit the same since the oil spill,
then twirled me in two steps to tunes about good-hearted women,
each step to songs about cheating, heartbreak, love gone wrong,
assurance all that mattered was the grip
of the moment, the trust of a spin,
the wonder of where the next step would fall.


--both of the above poems excerpted from Last to Leave