Full Description
A heartfelt collection that tumbles through a life of love in all its iterations.
In this collection of poems, curves in all their forms—a woman's full hips, a rolling mountain, water's soft bend, or the thrum of Irish immigrants living at the hard edges—are the focus. In their music, these poems celebrate queer love, map loss and liberation, and explore lovers' scars and the knot of kinship that remains even when love fades. Tragic and tender, The Curve of Things traces the ecstatic joys and difficulties of loving women, celebrating this sweeping terrain of desire. A hymn of unapologetic intimacy and delicate language, these poems choose love over defeat and celebrate the warmth that humanity is capable of.
Contents
Diversity of Matter
1: angles of discovery
The Curve of Things
Chocolate
Coming Out in Dublin, 1980
The Fall
Blowing Kisses
Wild West
About the Sadness
A Vesper of Sorts
To Taste
2: what I didn't know before
Tracings
Last Long Looks
Night Pools
Not a Flashy Thing
Acushla
"Red Leaves"
Ask Again
Late at Night
Mapping
how can I say that things are pictures
3: geographies of lives
This Place I Love
On Her Fourth Birthday
Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, 2003
That's All
What I Will Leave You
Stolen Poem
Amor Mundi
Mourning Flowers
Memory Chain
A Controlled Burn
4: recipe for daydreams
Torch Song
Burnt
Deep Grooves
Blue Morning
Iterations
A Canyon in My Throat
For Sweetness
Blowing Glass
Blue Fields
Acknowledgments
Gratitudes
