SpokenHeard with Kita Shantrisand Susan Dobbe Chase

Slyly sexual, intense and funny, in What Snakes Want Kita Shantiris strips secrets of their power by telling them. Running away and returning, burying and unearthing, she—and a cast that includes abused siblings, desperate spinsters, and an army medic—struggle to escape their shadows. Throughout, startling metaphors and evocative images bring them to life.

A psychologist who runs a non-profit mental health center, Shantiris faces trauma, yearning, love and loss head on. What Snakes Want traverses a menacing, bleak landscape as its characters shed their ghosts. Full of word play and mischief, sensuous love poems follow; never have oranges, or the word "dictum," been racier. The haunting elegies in the final section breathe life into the dead.

Fearless and compassionate, in What Snakes Want Kita shines light in our dark places. You will return to these haunting poems again and again.