Locus, by Courtney M. Hanks

Prose, prose poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features. The locus of a given spiral is exact, a specific number, and there is something comforting in knowing the place where something originates. Maybe by finding the locus, a person can control what happens next, disrupting the existing shape, creating something new. Where does a lie begin? A fear? A hope? In Locus, Courtney M. Hanks layers lyrical prose, history, and memoir to move through the spiral, searching for its center. Through memory, loss, betrayals, and time, each vignette dissects an element of personal history, pulling at threads to find the center, continually, with unflinching honesty. “The spiral moves toward my navel in its ascent, waxing, the labyrinth I search. Or I climb up, descend by degrees until I can see the next turn, wading through the bright spiral arms and the vast halo that extends perpetually, past my birth and my father’s birth and my grandmother’s, past all humanity and out past the creation of life to the millions of years that Earth existed as a sphere of red magma, turning, violent rivers of bursting, hot matter. I come from this, too.” Courtney M. Hanks is an artist and writer based in Central Florida. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Florida and is currently pursuing an MFA in Prose at Stetson University. As a neurodiverse storyteller, she is drawn to narratives that explore themes of lineage, history, truth, and human vulnerability.