Dawn Terpstra

Songs from the Summer Kitchen Dawn Terpstra

We sing the gossip like plumeria breezes early in the morning. In Dawn Terpstra's first chapbook, she explores a world of women who view their circumstances through an outsider's lens. She is the sister on the edge of the bench in the summer kitchen, painting toenails with the women in her family. The summer kitchen is a safe space where sisters pass time sharing stories about what it means to be a woman from anywhere. Inside a collective of women's experience, women negotiate agency between borders of culture and generation. "In dreams, water runs downhill, disappears down a sandy arroyo, blessed by something that is not God. But a magician with a bottle of Milagro-" Poems place the reader inside the minds and hearts of those who love, who suffer loss and shame, who cope with dissonance through delusion and fantasy, those who seek self in moments of clarity, flashes of joy and pride. These sisters share their stories, creating an intimate truth that strays from belief outside the screen door of the summer kitchen.