Don't Ask Me How I Know

A heart in extremity-what hungers, urgencies, hardships drive and deliver us? These poems, like fierce midwives who insist on getting life to its necessity of oxygen, restore power to us, recreate us in the process. We feel what lifts the moment, what comforts and holds us as we lean over the abyss. Even the ability to howl our lostness in a field is a saving volition and bounty this extraordinary poet fearlessly delivers to sustain us.

-Tess Gallagher, author of Is, Is Not

Don't Ask Me How I Know tenderly reveals the forces that shape human experience are more essential than having all the answers. We witness and grieve with her on tarmac and in stairwells, save old yellow sheets from the hospital shredder, reconnect over social media only to then let go. We too grow protective over the most vulnerable, the buck restfully hiding in her yard before making his escape, the beauty of one more day.

-Rosebud Ben-Oni, author of the Alice James Award-Winning If This Is the Age We End Discovery

Michele Bombardier lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate and has been designated an Island Treasure for her outstanding contributions to the arts and community. Don't Ask Me How I Know, her second fulllength collection, was the first runner-up for the Sally Albiso Award. She is also the author of What We Do, a Washington State Book Award finalist. Bombardier isthe 2024 winner of the NORward Prize, and the founder of Fishplate Poetry. Recent work has appeared in JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review, Atlanta Review, New Ohio Review, and others. Before returning to graduate school for her MFA in poetry at Pacific University, she worked as a neurological specialist speech-language pathologist in hospitals and private practice. She is certified in narrative medicine, leading workshops and retreats for clinicians and those affected by illness or disability. She is a fellow of Hedgebrook, Mineral School, EdithWharton House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and Centrum and has received support from Humanities Washington. Visit her online at MicheleBombardier.com.

Lana Hechtman Ayers is a former coffee-obsessive whose favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh's The Starry Night. She's shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Sky Over (Fernwood Press, 2026) is her most recent collection and she has poems appearing in numerous journals, such as The London Reader, Peregrine, and Exterminating Angel Press. She lives in Oregon, on the unceded lands of the Yaqo'n people, with her beloved husband and several adored fur babies. On clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.