Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

Left: Artwork by the writer, also titled "Disappearing Objects."



Don't look at your hands while juggling;
they should appear blurred, gesticulating skyward
as if rearranging the heavens. The Pleiades constellation
disappears the longer you stare.

I have been told to study my hands in the daytime;
Memorize their warmth, arrange each finger's position.
In my dream they flicker, drained of color and temperature,
but if I hold them steady they follow me through the night.

I grow accustomed to the habits of a body.
The lower lip bitten in concentration, the eager feet.
When I squint, shadows under his chin, nose, and brow
separate from three planes of light: forehead
like a plum freshly polished by shirt-sleeve,
and two cheeks singing under a lamp.

Behind eyelids, I see my hands
on the concave plane below his ribs,
imprinted in reverse color like the after-image
of a bulb. In the body's absence, the vision of skin
pulses and fades.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.




We enter the salt marsh with fingers crossed
for flicker feathers and boletes.
The hillside provide bones: a clean spine, intact,
a doe skull with a green map etched on her temples
like pathways on a molded topographic globe.
We lose our shoes to the bowels of the pickleweed carpet,
one breathing, gurgling mass of beaded glasswort,
sandfire, little red-tipped fingers clutching digested crabs
the size of spiders, whose sun-bleached exo-skeletons
glimmer against the dull estero palate.
A chorus of marbled godwits chant
kow-eto kow-eto as they lift collectively into the fog.
The flag woven of their wings pulses a few beats and fades.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums and a teacher. The following excerpts are from Frances's recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, published by Gold Wake Press. Frances is the author and illustrator of this peculiar tale of family, mental illness, adventure, and romance gone awry. She has an MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BFA from the University of Vermont. She has a book of poems and illustrations, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and a book of poems and prints, Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She has also contributed to Vice, McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, The Lucky Peach, and The Iowa Review, with work forthcoming through The New York Times. Frances is now working as an instructor of visual and literary arts at the Shelburne Craft School. in Vermont and through her own consulting business, the C.I.C.A.D.A. School.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums and a teacher. The following excerpts are from Frances's recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, published by Gold Wake Press. Frances is the author and illustrator of this peculiar tale of family, mental illness, adventure, and romance gone awry. She has an MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BFA from the University of Vermont. She has a book of poems and illustrations, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and a book of poems and prints, Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She has also contributed to Vice, McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, The Lucky Peach, and The Iowa Review, with work forthcoming through The New York Times. Frances is now working as an instructor of visual and literary arts at the Shelburne Craft School. in Vermont and through her own consulting business, the C.I.C.A.D.A. School.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums and a teacher. The following excerpts are from Frances's recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, published by Gold Wake Press. Frances is the author and illustrator of this peculiar tale of family, mental illness, adventure, and romance gone awry. She has an MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BFA from the University of Vermont. She has a book of poems and illustrations, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and a book of poems and prints, Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She has also contributed to Vice, McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, The Lucky Peach, and The Iowa Review, with work forthcoming through The New York Times. Frances is now working as an instructor of visual and literary arts at the Shelburne Craft School. in Vermont and through her own consulting business, the C.I.C.A.D.A. School.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums and a teacher. The following excerpts are from Frances's recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, published by Gold Wake Press. Frances is the author and illustrator of this peculiar tale of family, mental illness, adventure, and romance gone awry. She has an MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BFA from the University of Vermont. She has a book of poems and illustrations, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and a book of poems and prints, Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She has also contributed to Vice, McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, The Lucky Peach, and The Iowa Review, with work forthcoming through The New York Times. Frances is now working as an instructor of visual and literary arts at the Shelburne Craft School. in Vermont and through her own consulting business, the C.I.C.A.D.A. School.

Frances Cannon hails from the coasts, both East and West.  She juggles too many passions for her own good: bookmaking, printmaking, writing, cooking, the art of the garden, puppetry.  She strives toward a certain aesthetic: a mixture of oddity, adventure, and natural beauty.  She recently self-published a handmade book of silkscreened prints and poems called Image Burn, and is in a constant state of artistic production.  She studied poetry and printmaking at the University of Vermont and is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction at the University of Iowa.

FRANCES CANNON is a writer and artist of hybrid mediums and a teacher. The following excerpts are from Frances's recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, published by Gold Wake Press. Frances is the author and illustrator of this peculiar tale of family, mental illness, adventure, and romance gone awry. She has an MFA from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and a BFA from the University of Vermont. She has a book of poems and illustrations, Tropicalia, Vagabond Press, and a book of poems and prints, Uranian Fruit, Honeybee Press. She has also contributed to Vice, McSweeney's Quarterly, The Believer, The Lucky Peach, and The Iowa Review, with work forthcoming through The New York Times. Frances is now working as an instructor of visual and literary arts at the Shelburne Craft School. in Vermont and through her own consulting business, the C.I.C.A.D.A. School.