Ordinary Cruelty [Paperback]

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.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.