Alex Behr, Grief Stick (Picture Frame Press)

Cover art for the Grief Stick chapbook, which features a pink and black photo of a pocket knife.Alex Behr is the author of the multimedia project Grief Stick, which includes a poetry chapbook (Picture Frame Press), a short film edited by Brian Padian, as well as photographs and audio recordings. Alex’s poetry appeared in The Gravity of the Thing’s Fall 2020 issue and Stranged Writing anthology, and her flash fiction appeared in our Summer 2017 issue. To view the trailer for the Grief Stick short film, please click here.

About:

After 30 years separated by time and circumstance, poet Alex Behr reunites with lost love Chris Hartman, her “car guy” from San Francisco. In the fall of 2020, during the Covid lockdown, Chris becomes sick with an accelerated, fatal illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). He dies in their dining room on October 6, 2020. Grief Stick explores the contours of love and death, using photographs, voicemails, and video.

Praise:

“Her poetry is ecstatic, tender, vulnerable, fierce, and wholly unique. When I think of Alex there’s not another writer she reminds me of. If I were to compare her work as a poet it would have to be a comparison to some sort of mix between the late, great, visual artist Carl Andre and the band Public Image Limited or a mash-up of Patti Smith and the band Minor Threat.”

— Matthew Dickman