When You Finally Said No by Kathie Giorgio

“Kathie Giorgio’s poems sear and sizzle. They gut punch with harsh truths—“When you sit at your mirror / forever after a rape / you are not your reflection.” Giorgio’s is a voice we need in the #MeToo movement. These poems stand for innumerable women who have been silenced for centuries, and we are so very lucky to have them now.

–Shaindel Beers, author of Secure Your Own Mask, winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize

“Here are poems written maturely and wisely, yet with unflinching honesty that never steers off track, but keeps moving through a poetic chronology of hauntings, consequences, and self-reconciliation. The precise language, often percussive and lyrical, keeps the momentum going.  Kathie Giorgio creates allusions using nature, such as the sea gull who is like the raped girl, or the seasons, with summer lost to internal winter. A grey T-shirt becomes a symbol for a fearful, suffering self-image. Accessible, authoritative, stark without ranting, crisp staccato phrasing with forays into haiku and villanelle—a varied collection recalling clearly what it means to be a victim who does not deny the experience, but embraces it, expressed with artistic fullness.”

–Christine Swanberg, author of Wild Fruition, The Alleluia Tree, Who Walks Among The Trees With Charity

“Kathie Giorgio’s When You Finally Said No arrives at the right time. These poems are mirror and microphone both, as the words stretch to find language to speak what has previously been unspeakable, to tell stories that have before been hushed, shushed and shamed away.”

–Sarah Sadie, author of We Are Traveling Through Dark at Tremendous Speeds