Carrie Chappell

Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carrie Chappell is the author of Loving Tallulah Bankhead and Quarantine Daybook. Some of her recent poems have been published in Birdcoat Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Nashville Review, Redivider, and SWIMM, and her essays have previously appeared in DIAGRAM, Fanzine, New Delta Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Xavier Review. With Amanda Murphy, she co-translated Cassandra at point-blank range by Sandra Moussempès (Diálogos 2025). She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop and, presently, teaches English as a Foreign Language at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM). Each spring, she curates Verse of April, of which she is the founder, and one of her newest ventures is writing Spiritual Material: Musings from My Second-Hand, Parisian Wardrobe, which she hosts via Substack. As a current doctoral student in French Literature at CY Cergy Paris University, Carrie is completing a research-creation project around the poetic novels of Hélène Bessette.

---

I fondle the accidental.

Je frôle l’accident.

—Hélène Bessette, Histoire du chien

I brings you nothing but lyric casualty.

Clouds, forgeries, ribbons, teeth.

In the book of mishap, a heroine scatters petals.

A machine mauls the page.

Clouds, forgeries, ribbons, teeth.

Nadia-Nue, Fanny-Foo Foo, and God.

The page assassinates a machine.

Je les frôle.

Nadia-Nue, Fanny-Foo Foo, and God.

Insisting that the book ran away.

Elle les a tous frôlés.

Culprit translator.

Insisting that the book ran away.

Ils brings you nothing but lyric casualty.

Culprit translators.

In the book of mishap, I scatter petals.

---