At Lux Lotus, poetry is always de rigueur. Today, Christine Boyka Kluge, who participated in an online roundtable discussion I put together with the Emerging Writers Network last year, writes to say:
"Stirring the Mirror, my new collection of prose poetry and flash fiction, was just released by Bitter Oleander Press. I've been levitating since the book arrived. I love the way the cover turned out. A woman in Poland took the haunting and riveting photograph we used. I was thrilled to have blurbs from Peter Johnson, Ray Gonzalez, and Mary A. Koncel, all extraordinary writers and gifted prose poets."
Here is a poem from Boyka Kluge's previous book, Teaching Bones to Fly:
THE ABSENCE OF A HEART LEAVES AN HOURGLASS SHAPE
Overnight, she is different.
Now she breathes only sand and salt,
clouds of talcum and dust.
Her chest is a hole
dug in a desert dune.
She inhales to fill it,
exhaling only shadows.
The absence of a heart
leaves an hourglass shape.
It takes so much time
to replace the missing weight.Tears spent, she ignores thirst.
She doesn't remember food.
She closes tight as a seed,
storing herself for later.
She no longer craves even air.
But, oh --
the possibility of lightning,
like a crack in the purple-black sky,
the sweet chance of rain!
She dreams of flowers
like hundreds of crimson mouths,
parting their lips
among cactus thorns.
You can order Stirring the Mirror here, and also visit Christine's new blog! You can also experience the above poem in spooky-beautiful interactive online art style, in a gorgeously Lynchian collabo with artist/designer Rick Mullarky and composer Kala Pierson.
Photo: Hilary Swank by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for the Pirelli Calendar (2007).
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