A Fearless Excavation of Girlhood and Womanhood: UNDER THE TENTED SKIN by C. Kubasta
Portland, OR—May 13, 2025—In UNDER THE TENTED SKIN, poet C. Kubasta cracks open the myths, memories, and messes that make up women’s lives, peeling back the layers we’re taught to keep hidden. With razor-sharp language and unsettling beauty, Kubasta asks readers to step inside the cramped spaces where girls and women live—physically, emotionally, and historically—and look without flinching.
This poetry collection traverses folkloric history and personal memory, fusing the spectacle of womanhood with its stark realities. From the earliest social conditioning of girls to the thorny terrain of rural teenage years and into the complicated landscapes of adult womanhood, Kubasta’s poems do not shy away from the traps, tensions, or the raw hunger for something more. As she warns in one chilling line, “I don’t throw the skins away / and I’ve been known to gnaw a bone”—a powerful refusal to let any part of the story be discarded.
Kubasta’s voice is urgent and unapologetic, wrestling with the roles women are forced to play and the resilience it takes to survive them. In a world that would prefer its women to stay silent or sweet, UNDER THE TENTED SKIN is a howl, a reckoning, and an invitation to witness.
Featured Poem: The Myth of the Underage Woman
What I think is a hummingbird,
heart rate more than a thousand beats a minute, resting
respiration in the hundreds—is a sphinx moth: still beautiful,
somewhat rare, nectar feeder, honey stealer. It courts
confusion. This isn’t about birds at all.
What looked sodden & substantial under the surface
is just water contacting water, aping solid.
Even a dream where your sister offers
a bushel of bird beaks means nothing finally.
Female dragonflies of the A. Juncea species
fall from the sky to avoid copulating with males.
Cellophane wings glitter the ground; underbellies of
thorax showing. The observant scientists note:
This is an atypical posture for a dragonfly.
The underbelly of the thorax is called the sternum;
the females assume this posture to mimic death.
When threatened, the human
response includes an instant increase
in heart rate & blood pressure.
Muscles, lungs, brain bathed in blood—the flow swells
hundreds of percent to arm us for whatever is coming.
It must mean something: the way you turn toward it, or
cower & cover, hands splayed over sternum, wings still.
About the Author:
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms, with a sharp eye on language and its role in shaping our cultural narratives. Her previous book, Abjectification, was a story collection praised for its bold honesty. Formerly a professor of writing, literature, and cultural studies, Kubasta now serves as executive director of Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. She is passionate about the intersections of language, rural life, and the untold stories that define us. Learn more at ckubasta.com or follow her @CKfaubastathePoet.
