Traci Brimhall

Biography

Traci Brimhall is the author of the forthcoming essay collection The Grief Artist (Sarabande, 2026) and the poetry collection Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon, 2014). Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Fourth Genre, Guernica, New England Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry. She’s the current Poet Laureate of Kansas and poet in residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2018

Dearest Eros,

By Traci Brimhall

I did this to myself, I know. You are not mine
but come as wind clotted with the end of a season. 
Did you know all a ginkgo’s leaves fall on the same day? 
Sometimes it’s called maiden hair. For its beauty. 

POETRY / Summer 2018

Sphinx

By Traci Brimhall

The last time I left your house I saw a moth 
on the black skin of a puddle, ruining herself 
on the moon’s reflection. Dear sphinx hawkmoth 

POETRY / Summer 2018

Dear Eros,

By Traci Brimhall

I have found you where I shouldn’t—in the wrong bodies, 
at the wrong time, and once on a subway platform 
with my feet stuck to a pool of dried soda taking gum 
from a near-stranger’s mouth. That night you were spearmint 
and the 6 train. I...

POETRY / Summer 2012

The Hunger River

By Traci Brimhall
POETRY / Spring 2012

The Lazarus Collector

By Traci Brimhall