Tara Betts is the author of Arc and Hue (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2009) and a Cave Canem fellow. Tara teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Essence, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006) and the upcoming A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (The University of Akron Press, 2012) and Villanelles (Everyman Publishing, 2012).
Unfortunately, I enjoy blasphemy. / My nightmares will kill me before God does. / What is a nightmare but what God does / to the trees, hiding paper in their pith?