Blood Box, the deliciously haunting debut short collection from poet Zefyr Lisowski, takes us inside the infamous 1892 axe murders of Abby and Andrew Borden through twenty-six wide-ranging, stylistically experimental persona poems. Lisowski re-introduces us to mythologized spinster Lizzie Borden as we’ ve never seen her before: a girl wielding an axe, yes, but also a girl trapped-in the boxes of age, of hunger, of loneliness, of blame. Lizzie, who was acquitted of the double murder of her father and stepmother, yet continues to haunt our cultural psyche over a hundred years later. Even now, “ Violence dances with us like ghosts.”
In these pages, the notorious crime and its cast of characters serve as a jumping-off point for a textured exploration of inherited violence, queer intimacy, and the way family can be “ another geometry, another violence too.” Blood Box is Lizzie’ s story, but it’ s also the story of grief, of selfhood, of trans and queer becoming. Lisowski’ s Lizzie Borden is as sweet, sad, spooky, and haunted as a girl with an axe ever can be.
About the Author
Zefyr Lisowski is the author of two poetry collections, Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Girl Work (Noemi Press, 2024). Her essay collection about horror movies, exes, and love is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in Fall 2025. A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction, and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she lives online at zeflisowski.com. She's seen grave robbers twice.
