Tori Grant Welhouse

CONTACT:
2967 School Lane
Green Bay, WI 54313
Email. torigrantwelhouse@gmail.com
Website: torigrantwelhouse.com

BIO:
Tori Grant Welhouse is a poet and novelist from Green Bay, Wisconsin, with an award-winning poetry chapbook Vaginas Need Air (Etchings Press, 2020) and a prize-winning YA fantasy novel The Fergus (Skyrocket Press, 2020). She earned an honorable mention in the 2021 Hal Prize and was a runner-up in the 2020 Princemere Prize. Her poems have appeared most recently in Red River Review, Cloudbank and 3rd Wednesday.  She is an active volunteer for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (www.wfop.org) and co-creator of the literary magazine Bramble. She earned an MFA from Antioch International in London. Learn more www.torigrantwelhouse.com

PUBLICATIONS:
Vaginas Need Air, winner Etching Press’s 2020 chapbook contest
Stashed: A Primer in Lunch Poems, 2019
The Fergus, winner of Skyrocket Press’s 2019 novel-writing contest
Canned, Finishing Line Press, 2014

Poetry

Theory of Cake

You are an occasion.
Cake, in fact.
All your ingredients—
flour, sugar,

the look in your eyes—
measured parts
of a sucrose destiny.
You have memorized

yourself: finding fate
in the small spaces,
blending eggs, milk,
the air around your edges,

pouring the light-haired
batter: a mix of heat, poise, 
s o d i u m   b i c a r b o n a t e.
You froth an alchemy

that swells, gilding
aroma, deep-seated
as hipbones. Your
surface splits joy.

There’s a sheen to you,
made for buttercream;
the knack of hiding crust
with long-leg frosting.

You cube womanhood,
serving yourself up
with a party napkin—
thumbing the crumbs.

Originally published in The Greensboro Review

Tickle Back

Mother swirls my naked back like skywriting, with the ends of her fingers, twirling, teasing me to sleep. I'm aware of the fabric of my pajama top rolled at the back of my neck, the heavy weight of lying flat on my stomach, arms at my sides, slight dip of the mattress under her hip, short bursts of breath as she whorls the expanse of my back, runnel of spine, wings of my shoulder blades.

I'm aware of night sounds through the screen, wind rushing the trees, dogs barking, car horns bleating. The wider universe, thickness of evening on the low horizon, clouds like clotted cream, heavy with moisture and marvel, stars charged with points of light, snagging my dream eyes.

Andromeda on my back. Cassiopeia. Virgo. Mother conjures a constellation on my skin, configuration of feelings, night-wishing.

From Vaginas Need Air, published by Etchings press