bouquet of thorny rose

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>bouquet of thorny rose</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> explores the intricacies of living in a deviant body through the intersections of pleasure trauma memory and emotion. This hybrid collection burrows deep into relationships with self others and the world to examine unearth and name. To tend and prune. You will find stories of violation reclamation naked truths and hard-won joy.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Written in a time of increasing chronic pain and isolation after the loss of one womb two jobs and the lion's share of community connections. During the pandemic that followed and still rages on. Reflecting the fears it all invokes and how they leave old scars aching. A ritual to unravel what is from what has come before to shine a light on the places of echo and panic. To pin them into place to clean and soothe and then set loose.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The collection is a landscape furrowed deep as generations. Roots sunk deep in salt water and sweet rain feeding on rock music and rolling thunder and wordless cries. Harvested as sustenance and balm. As sutures and soft bindings. There are dried gourds rattling like a locked bathroom door and blossoms so radiant they will leave pollen across your palm.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>These poems have never seen the inside of an academic institution. Would surely trip over the structure and spill raw truths across the floor. They flourish outside of walls in wild profusion. They welcome foragers and cross pollination. Digging upward through muck they adorn themselves with bright tipped thorns and tender petals. Flirt shameless with the sky.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Queer non-binary fat aging femme disabled working class a survivor. A caretaker and an oldest child. A person conditioned and used and punished as female. A person with privilege of race and geography. A person shunned and shamed as deviant. Making lists of words to try to describe and decipher myself is a long-time practice and no matter how long it gets so much of the understanding lies between them. Making those lists into poems increases the potency. Layers the flavors.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The intention is resonance. To share as food or medicine or hedonism or validation. To upend the basket and sift through perhaps to find a seed of your own. So often we go hungry prowling the shadows at feasts we aren't invited to. Seeking flavors labeled poison but tasting of home. Seeking antidotes for those they force us to swallow. Perhaps for you some grow here.</span></p>