Chapbooks

Little Palace of Illness

Little Palace of Illness is a palimpsest of relationships—with mothers and fathers, with siblings, with husbands and lovers, friends and even pets. Ana Manwaring explores love and loss in an intimate chronicle pulled from her experiences as a child of divorce, adoption, the loss of her sister to cancer, first love met, lost and lost again. The poems uncover human emotions tied to marriage, death, eldercare and belonging to expose the guilt and anger, yearnings, sadness and joys, and love that lead to the ultimate outcome: Forgiveness and release. 

Now available in Paperback at Amazon

Nature Girl

Ana Manwaring finds inspiration on her acre of rural Northern California. Her poems reveal insights of the full moon and the eroticism in the pollination of trees. Take a walk with Nature Girl and fall in love with the denizens—crows, skunks, turkeys, deer, scrub jays, and even the rodents— who populate these poems.

Nick Triglia, poet, author of My Religion and In the Shadow of the Postman

Now available in Paperback at Amazon

The Question

What question wafts on the spring air
like feathered seed, trailing the chatter
of grey squirrels from the redwoods, twittering
with the finches in leafy hiding, awaiting
Sunday brunch at the feeder?
A question as iridescent and sleek
as that pair of crows, calling
plans for offspring growing
in eggshell sacks in a nest nearby.
Does the family of quail pecking
across the field answer? Or the ringed doves’
sacred songs, do they tell me the answer?