bouquet of thorny rose

bouquet of thorny rose 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.