When did I become a woman who bakes bread
while her dog dies, while her children laugh in the other room
over a joke she will never be privy to, while one forest burns
& another withers with toxic fungus, while children die
under another bomb or beneath the crush of plastic?
Read More“There are ruins we witness
within the moment of the world’s first awakening
and the birds love you within that moment. They want
to eat the air and the stars they’ve hungered for, little razors.”
My imagination wants to redeem the bareness of fact,
so I imagine the field he dies in as a place we might
have picnicked, imagine wind entering his clothes
and leaving again
Read More“I’m not dying yet, but she wants to be sure.
She asks me to deliver a ransom of syringes."
—from “Auto-Immune” by Destiny O. Birdsong
Read More“And I don’t know
what might bring peace on earth. But a man
fallen asleep at his desk while revising
a letter…”
—from “Love Succeeding” by Li-Young Lee from The Undressing
Read More
I’ve never read a collection of poems that so saliently addresses a life lived with a disability, in the shadows of medical intervention both the ones that linger behind you and the ones that are cast ahead of you, and how the scared body in pain exists in this beautiful and terrifying world. I cried over my coffee more than once as I read these intimate letters between Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison because I found echoed there my experiences, for the first time in literature not found in an obscure medical study found in the Google rabbit hole after a night of pain keeps me awake and wondering why and how I got there and if I am alone with it. I’m not. I have these overheard conversations, like clues toward an answer.
Again and again, came to mind the image of sea glass. Broken, ragged, sharp, raw, but through the tumble of waves something beautiful, smoothed, a story in its own right. These poems were the waves, I am the broken bit of glass from a bottle.
The first time I read Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris, my house was, for the first time in months, blissfully silent. My husband had taken the children on a bike ride, to donuts. It was not yet 8 am and the dog, cat, and I sat on the couch and I read the book cover to cover, pausing only 3 times. Twice to cry, once to refill my coffee. My pets were audience to the lines I couldn’t help but read aloud. The sunlight and the silence and the animals nearby created a perfect atmosphere for reading these poems (the only detractor was a distant weed-whacker, and even that brought contrast to the poems).
When I decided to read it again, I knew I needed to make it another beautiful moment. Aside from finding myself valuing these moments during a pandemic and worldwide pain, this is a book that deserves intention in its reading—though I believe that about most books. It doesn’t need intention or a beautiful moment (it would be incredible even read in a dirty bathroom stall at the world’s worse airport), but it deserves the reader’s intention, slowness, focus. I read this book for a second time on a 107 degree day, bright California light casting across my kitchen table, a cold cider at hand, a bowl of passion fruit picked from the vine outback nearby, watching my own garden wither in the heat while reading of Danusha’s lush garden, loss, grief, desire, and that bigheartedness that great poets bring to the page, to their readers, to the world. These are poems not just about seeing the world beautifully, but living beautifully in the world.
Below are two poems which stuck with me after both readings. Though, if I am being honest, this whole book is with me lately. Read it for yourself, let me know what you think.
