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    Ordinary Cruelty
    Ordinary Cruelty
    Ordinary Cruelty
    Ebook84 pages23 minutes

    Ordinary Cruelty

    By Amber Flame

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    About this ebook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateApr 15, 2017
    ISBN9781949342093
    Ordinary Cruelty
    Author

    Amber Flame

    Amber Flame (she/her) is deputy publisher and cofounder at Generous Press. She is a multi-genre writer, educator, and arts administrator serving as program director for Hedgebrook, a premier writing residency for women-identified writers. She has served as a copyeditor, development editor, and general “fluffer” for all manner of texts. Her mission is joy. Flame is the author of the poetry collections Ordinary Cruelty and apocrifa; her writing has earned awards from Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, Jack Straw, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and YEFE NOF.   

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      Book preview

      Ordinary Cruelty - Amber Flame

      THIS POEM IS A

      yo mama joke. is trying again

      to be funny. this poem is all yo mama is so

      dead. your mother is dead. this poem can’t be

      funny. sweats onstage under the lights. this

      poem is awkward pauses where the audience

      was supposed to ______. the audience didn’t

      _______. the audience throws rotten

      hearts onstage. boo

      hoos.

      this poem is a joke. not haha so funny

      or roll your eyes. this joke (that is also a poem)

      is like quit playing. that’s not funny.

      this joke has gone on for too long. is

      interrupting your birthday. is 36 days past

      its point and this better be fucking

      hysterical. this poem is not hysterical.

      is not weeping and wailing. is slow seep

      from a wound that will kill you (better get

      that looked at/oops too late). this poem

      is dead already. cannot believe it.

      did not disintegrate. this

      poem whooshed up in flames. burned hot.

      left you its ash. this poem is not a joke. is

      a not funny quit playing. this poem cannot find

      its end. punch. line.

      HOW I KILLED HER

      after Anastacia Renee

      1.

      once you pried and pried and pried until the lid went pop and out came all the paper snakes except they weren’t paper and there was no shaky laugh just the shakes. and the snakes hissed and slithered all over the rooms and slithered their way into the twists of your hair and out the lids of your eyes tiny wagging curling tails.

      my mother tells me there isn’t much to say. her voice is like why are you bothering me with talking about him but her eyes shift like these answers are important for you but i don’t want to say. i ask questions that are less obvious, come at it roundabout. she wants to talk. she says that is always the problem, she wanted to talk, she was their friend, she was never trying to get a boyfriend. what about him i ask and she says she didn’t know him very well. and her lips press shut. there isn’t much to

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