Ordinary Cruelty

by Amber Flame

Overview

In her debut poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty , Amber Flame spells out rituals in everyday decisions to hold on or let go.
While questioning the role of elder, mentor, mother in the face of losing those figures, Flame details the unrelenting nature of parenthood through the cycles of grief. Her poems exuberantly rejoice in the brown skin of the female body, while soberly acknowledging the societal dangers of claiming such skin as home. Flame takes the reader through a visceral examination of the body's processes of both dying and continuing to live and the joy to be found while we do.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938912702
Publisher:	Write Bloody Publishing
Publication date:	04/01/2017
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press.

Read an Excerpt

at 40 weeks
(1.)
everyone knows you don't really want to be here. you are alien animal enough to smell the gun smoke and taste how asphalt licks blood, and you want none of it. you bulge the belly, both content and restive; try to avoid the detection of ultrasound. our impatience is not in your reluctance to arrive but the futility of it. the spaceship crash landed, there is no return.
(2.)
she asks me if i am done having kids. i choke and sputter on the likely ash of my daughter's bones wrapped in the burning rags of her flesh, bullet ridden or shell shocked. i have empty hands when things go awry. fear is fevered breath i keep my lips clamped down around. determined to clench helpless around my own flesh-dug nails and not make my daughter comfort object. security blanket. shield. i weigh percentages. yes, i say.
(3.)
we have done our best at cajoling you. you say you do not want words and can tug umbilical for all the other sweet things this world can possibly offer. you say look, see how big we are getting, we are just fine staying in here. no one wants to tell you that you are becoming your own kind of monster. that you are sure to rip and tear; what you might become if you begin with shredding your mother.

Table of Contents

Ordinary Cruelty

Where I Went While You Were Dying 2

This Poem Is A 4

How I Killed Her 5

Resurrection, Or Unresolved Abandonment Issues When Your Mother Dies 7

In This Incarnation 8

See Now 9

My Guilt Complex As Inheritance 10

Ordinary Cruelty: Suckle 11

Evelia (At Bedtime) 12

The Daily Grind 14

Boy, Age 7 15

Body Long Enough To Fill the Tub 16

In Which Your Daughter Makes Friends with the Neighbor Boys 17

Upon Returning From a Foreign Land, Or Situation Normal All Fucked Up, Or Another Day Black in America 18

What to Bring To a Die-In 20

Your Nephew Gives Your Daughter

A Toy Gun for Her Birthday 21

Evelia (Being Sick) 22

Governess 23

Chore Chart in the Fortress of Solitude 25

An Octopus Escapes the Fishing Net: Advice for My Daughter As Cephalopod 26

My Sister At 40 Weeks, Or One-And-Done For Me 28

Upon Inheriting 29

Mommy Needs a Minute 30

Little Girl Blue 31

Ne Me Quitte Pas 33

Ordinary Cruelty: Suck 34

Cracking Cords 35

:And This Is Why She Left 36

If You Look Out Your Left Window, You Can See the Detonation Site 37

:Ticktickticktick: 40

Surprise Package the Day After 41

You Decide Your Deepest Cut 42

And For the Next Trick 43

Evelia (In Glimmers) 44

I's Just a Tired Woman After a Long Day of Being Black 46

Request for Services 47

High-Functioning 48

:Because It's Not Like You Have Time Or Anything To Miss Her: 49

Smell My Victory 50

Smell My Defeat 52

Permanence 54

Nothing Smells Like My Mother Anymore & I Am Starting To Forget 55

When The Dog Bites, When the Bee Stings 56

When It Was My Turn, Or, We Can't Both Be Broken At Once 57

Nothing to See Here, Or Moms Don't Have Sex 58

Unintended Celibacy, Or When The Vibrator Ain't Enough 59

You Will Find It 61

Hummingbird 62

Editorial Reviews

"In Ordinary Cruelty, a bereaved daughter is a watchful mother is a queer and hungry lover is a Black woman is America. Amber Flame knows how to sing, and these poems do sing. But these poems also wail and hush and sound an urgent siren: we are not okay. Here is a poet who is generous enough to be real with her readers about what it means to be human. Each poem reminds—yes, we’re lonely, we’re hunted, we’re terrifyingly mortal, but still somehow we love (and love and love). This is a book to keep close and return to; tender company in a time that wants to tear us apart.” – Elaina Ellis, Associate Editor at Copper Canyon Press

From the Publisher