Danielle Hanson

Danielle Hanson Poems

Danielle Hanson Biography

Danielle Hanson received her MFA from Arizona State University and now lives in Atlanta, GA. Formerly the poetry editor of Hayden's Ferry Review, she currently serves as managing editor/assistant editor of Carriage House Review. Her work has appeared in Poetry Miscellany, Hiram Poetry Review, Marlboro Review, The Lucid Stone, Willow Springs, The Nebraska Review, Cimarron Review, Flyway, Roanoke Review, The Homestead Review, The English Journal, Poet Lore, Clackamas Literary Review, Mudfish, Asheville Poetry Review, and Sulphur River Literary Review. Her poetry has also appeared in the anthology Poets Against the War (Thunder Mouth/Nation, 2003), and Shout Them from the Mountaintops: Georgia Poems (Legacy Press, 2003). She has been on staff at the Meachem Writers' Conference and received the Fulton County (Georgia) Arts Council Grant for a residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences.)

The Best Poem Of Danielle Hanson

Red Nail Polish

You asked me to paint my nails red
and so, of course, I did
even though I hated the way
they stalked the eye.
My hand was suddenly not my own.
It was five cherry bombs
waiting to go off.
My arm was the shadow
of a red light district.

I shouldn't have gone but it was too late.
Fire ants were marching,
the sun was red and multiple,
the blue was red, the green, everything.

I wanted to cut my fingers off, escape,
but that would only let the color run
to the counter, the floor,
multiply like cockroaches and hide in the dark.
I couldn't get them all anyway.
What would I do when one hand was only a stub?
I needed them. How could I sever them from you?

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