Ordinary Cruelty

<p><strong>In her debut poetry collection <em>Ordinary Cruelty</em> Amber Flame spells out rituals in everyday decisions to hold on or let go.</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>Her poems exuberantly rejoice in the brown skin of the female body while soberly acknowledging the societal dangers of claiming such skin as home.</p><p>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.</p>