Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos - Elizabeth McClellan
she's not running anymore
sensing this danger
practically humming with tension
she doesn't want to die
Great books consume you, speak to you, and it’s tempting, when it happens, to eat the book back. With scalpel held steady, Elizabeth McClellan has managed just that. The centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos break these women up bite-sized, re-amass, recombine them, and offer their essence back too big to ever choke down. This collection is a praise work to horror; a blood and guts gift to fandom; a new, needed creation in the blistering and gripping world of Stephen Graham Jones.
“It's unhealthy to leave a narrative incomplete,” Elizabeth McClellan writes, but the centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart? (sic)are nonetheless an exercise in sawing up Stephen Graham Jones’ slasher classic into severed and bleeding bits. McClellan finds insight, weird humor, and pathos in the entrails, but most of all the divination here is an act of love—for Jones, for language, for slashers, and for all the final girls.”
Noah Berlatsky, author of Not Akhmatova and Gnarly Thumbs
“If Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is A Chainsaw is like a grim, gore-riddled nightmare of trauma survival rendered deliberately and beautifully into a cathedral's rose window, then Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is like stepping barefoot into the shards of that same window, now shattered. It’s like looking down into brokenness, and realizing that someone has lovingly crafted a mosaic from the fractured pieces. McClellan's collection of centos is enjambed with razor glints and bleeding hints of menace, monsters, and heroism. If you haven’t read the original novel, it will make you want to read it. If you have read it, it will only enhance your experience. McClellan's Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is a paean of the highest order, a poetic act of creation begat of creation.”
C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
“It’s natural to expect daffodils, a waning moon, or perhaps an orchard or two - we’re talking poetry here; no one expects to be dropped into an active bloodbath when opening a poetry collection, where bleached skulls sit & grow in gardens of verse, and the moon (visceral & beet red) threatens us with warning... Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw A Heart: 13 Centos romanticizes the cinematic meat-grinder where we are all ‘the final girl’... insightful & pulse- pounding — stunned & astonished... “Underneath her gown are her custodian coveralls” - these poems are a bloodletting... but are we just viewers? Or are we their next victims? This is a strong, insightful, and self-assured collection. Not a jump scare in sight.”
upfromsumdirt, author of Deifying a Total Darkness & The Second Stop Is Jupiter
“McClellan’s surgical eye for the beating throbbing core of Stephen Graham Jones' angular lyrical prose brings us a document that is full to the brim with lines that will steal your breath away before returning it to you held in hallowed reverence in the next stanza and the next and the next . . .”
Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles In Your Area
Release Date: July 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-15-6
68 pages
she's not running anymore
sensing this danger
practically humming with tension
she doesn't want to die
Great books consume you, speak to you, and it’s tempting, when it happens, to eat the book back. With scalpel held steady, Elizabeth McClellan has managed just that. The centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos break these women up bite-sized, re-amass, recombine them, and offer their essence back too big to ever choke down. This collection is a praise work to horror; a blood and guts gift to fandom; a new, needed creation in the blistering and gripping world of Stephen Graham Jones.
“It's unhealthy to leave a narrative incomplete,” Elizabeth McClellan writes, but the centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart? (sic)are nonetheless an exercise in sawing up Stephen Graham Jones’ slasher classic into severed and bleeding bits. McClellan finds insight, weird humor, and pathos in the entrails, but most of all the divination here is an act of love—for Jones, for language, for slashers, and for all the final girls.”
Noah Berlatsky, author of Not Akhmatova and Gnarly Thumbs
“If Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is A Chainsaw is like a grim, gore-riddled nightmare of trauma survival rendered deliberately and beautifully into a cathedral's rose window, then Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is like stepping barefoot into the shards of that same window, now shattered. It’s like looking down into brokenness, and realizing that someone has lovingly crafted a mosaic from the fractured pieces. McClellan's collection of centos is enjambed with razor glints and bleeding hints of menace, monsters, and heroism. If you haven’t read the original novel, it will make you want to read it. If you have read it, it will only enhance your experience. McClellan's Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is a paean of the highest order, a poetic act of creation begat of creation.”
C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
“It’s natural to expect daffodils, a waning moon, or perhaps an orchard or two - we’re talking poetry here; no one expects to be dropped into an active bloodbath when opening a poetry collection, where bleached skulls sit & grow in gardens of verse, and the moon (visceral & beet red) threatens us with warning... Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw A Heart: 13 Centos romanticizes the cinematic meat-grinder where we are all ‘the final girl’... insightful & pulse- pounding — stunned & astonished... “Underneath her gown are her custodian coveralls” - these poems are a bloodletting... but are we just viewers? Or are we their next victims? This is a strong, insightful, and self-assured collection. Not a jump scare in sight.”
upfromsumdirt, author of Deifying a Total Darkness & The Second Stop Is Jupiter
“McClellan’s surgical eye for the beating throbbing core of Stephen Graham Jones' angular lyrical prose brings us a document that is full to the brim with lines that will steal your breath away before returning it to you held in hallowed reverence in the next stanza and the next and the next . . .”
Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles In Your Area
Release Date: July 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-15-6
68 pages
she's not running anymore
sensing this danger
practically humming with tension
she doesn't want to die
Great books consume you, speak to you, and it’s tempting, when it happens, to eat the book back. With scalpel held steady, Elizabeth McClellan has managed just that. The centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos break these women up bite-sized, re-amass, recombine them, and offer their essence back too big to ever choke down. This collection is a praise work to horror; a blood and guts gift to fandom; a new, needed creation in the blistering and gripping world of Stephen Graham Jones.
“It's unhealthy to leave a narrative incomplete,” Elizabeth McClellan writes, but the centos in Is My Chainsaw a Heart? (sic)are nonetheless an exercise in sawing up Stephen Graham Jones’ slasher classic into severed and bleeding bits. McClellan finds insight, weird humor, and pathos in the entrails, but most of all the divination here is an act of love—for Jones, for language, for slashers, and for all the final girls.”
Noah Berlatsky, author of Not Akhmatova and Gnarly Thumbs
“If Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart is A Chainsaw is like a grim, gore-riddled nightmare of trauma survival rendered deliberately and beautifully into a cathedral's rose window, then Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is like stepping barefoot into the shards of that same window, now shattered. It’s like looking down into brokenness, and realizing that someone has lovingly crafted a mosaic from the fractured pieces. McClellan's collection of centos is enjambed with razor glints and bleeding hints of menace, monsters, and heroism. If you haven’t read the original novel, it will make you want to read it. If you have read it, it will only enhance your experience. McClellan's Is My Chainsaw a Heart: 13 Centos is a paean of the highest order, a poetic act of creation begat of creation.”
C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter
“It’s natural to expect daffodils, a waning moon, or perhaps an orchard or two - we’re talking poetry here; no one expects to be dropped into an active bloodbath when opening a poetry collection, where bleached skulls sit & grow in gardens of verse, and the moon (visceral & beet red) threatens us with warning... Elizabeth R. McClellan’s Is My Chainsaw A Heart: 13 Centos romanticizes the cinematic meat-grinder where we are all ‘the final girl’... insightful & pulse- pounding — stunned & astonished... “Underneath her gown are her custodian coveralls” - these poems are a bloodletting... but are we just viewers? Or are we their next victims? This is a strong, insightful, and self-assured collection. Not a jump scare in sight.”
upfromsumdirt, author of Deifying a Total Darkness & The Second Stop Is Jupiter
“McClellan’s surgical eye for the beating throbbing core of Stephen Graham Jones' angular lyrical prose brings us a document that is full to the brim with lines that will steal your breath away before returning it to you held in hallowed reverence in the next stanza and the next and the next . . .”
Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles In Your Area
Release Date: July 3, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-15-6
68 pages