Publisher's Synopsis
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.
Praise
"In Ordinary Cruelty, a bereaved daughter is a watchful mother is a queer and hungry lover is a black woman is America. Amber Flame knows how to sing, and these poems do sing. But these poems also wail and hush and sound an urgent siren: we are not okay. Here is a poet who is generous enough to be real with her readers about what it means to be human. Each poem reminds- yes we're lonely, we're hunted, we're terrifyingly mortal, but still somehow we love (and love and love). This is a book to keep close and return to; tender company in a time that wants to tear us apart."
- Elaina Ellis, Associate Editor at Copper Canyon Press
