Stump, by Ann Kammerer

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features. After years apart, a young woman returns to visit her estranged mother. She meets her mother’s latest partner—a veteran pilot of World War II with his own history of loss, abandonment, and unmet expectations. Amid poverty and fractured relationships, the three struggle to connect. Set in the late 1970s in Battle Creek, Michigan, Stump uses eight mini-stories in verse by Ann Kammerer to explore a broken mother-daughter bond, diminished hope, and the erosion of the American dream in a once-thriving Midwestern city. Ann Kammerer writes short fiction and narrative poetry. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband and daughter, and is a native of Michigan. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Fictive Dream, One Art, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Chiron Review, BlazeVOX, The Broken Spine, 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, and elsewhere, and in anthologies by Workers Write!, Querencia Press, and Crow Woods Publishing. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include Yesterday’s Playlist (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Beaut (Kelsay Books, 2024), Friends Once There (Impspired, 2024), Someone Else (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and At the Cleaners (Bottlecap Press, 2025). You can find her here: annkammerer.com