The Rabbits Could Sing
67 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:15 Feb 2012
ISBN:9781602231597
The poems included in The Rabbits Could Sing delve farther into territory that Amber Flora Thomas visited in her prize-winning book Eye of Water, showing even more clearly how “the seam has been pulled so far open on the past” that “the dress will never close.” Here, the poem acts not as a body in itself but as a garb drawn around the here and now. Loss, longing, and violation are sustenance to a spirit jarred from its animal flesh and torn apart, unsettling the reader with surprising images that are difficult to forget. The poems in The Rabbits Could Sing invite the reader into a world thick with the lush bounty of summer in the far north, where the present is never far from the shadow of the past.
Thomas has such a fine eye for details that even the ordinary task of carrying shopping bags into the house is made marvelous by her attention to the heft of groceries. . . . . The redeeming fact Thomas comes back to time and time again is that our life is ours and it is made better by the attention it can be paid.
With The Rabbits Could Sing, Amber Flora Thomas continues her upward arc in the world of poetry. . . Readers of modern poetry and lovers of nature should find much to enjoy in this collection, wherein the rabbits sing, and they sing beautifully.
Amber Flora Thomas is the author of Eye of Water: Poems, and her poems have appeared in Callao, Orion Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other publications.
Acknowledgments
I
In August
Swarm
To a Reader
The Chipped Bowl
Take Off the Yellow Slicker
Three Windows
Migraine Confessional
When You Rise You Do Not Drown
Serenade
Woman on Shore
Penny’s Gallon
Summer Mold
II
Listen
Conversation with the Sculptor
Self-Portrait in the Tide
Come in from the Sky
Black Dog
Killing the Rabbit: Ars Poetica
Thinking in Front of a Mirror
Era of a Happy Heart
Biology Lesson
Here
More Light Because Her Shadow Shook
In the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Membrane
After
Braid
III
Dear Reader
Then You Fled the Room
Heart with Interior View
Two Horses
Hood
The Killed Rabbit
Inside the Pleiades
Spider
Bull Frog
Unattended
Sometimes Oranges
Regarding Mercy
IV
Prayer Found in Water Pouring Down a Bus Window
Ultrasound Aubade
Cavity in the Rubenesque Façade
April Spill-Off
Parenting the Void
Magician
Bird Leaving a Branch
Meditation on Four West
From Her Lips to God’s Ears
Sunbathing
Girl in the Woods
Hare in My Garden
Pelvis with the Distance
The Get Away
Biographical Note
I
In August
Swarm
To a Reader
The Chipped Bowl
Take Off the Yellow Slicker
Three Windows
Migraine Confessional
When You Rise You Do Not Drown
Serenade
Woman on Shore
Penny’s Gallon
Summer Mold
II
Listen
Conversation with the Sculptor
Self-Portrait in the Tide
Come in from the Sky
Black Dog
Killing the Rabbit: Ars Poetica
Thinking in Front of a Mirror
Era of a Happy Heart
Biology Lesson
Here
More Light Because Her Shadow Shook
In the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Membrane
After
Braid
III
Dear Reader
Then You Fled the Room
Heart with Interior View
Two Horses
Hood
The Killed Rabbit
Inside the Pleiades
Spider
Bull Frog
Unattended
Sometimes Oranges
Regarding Mercy
IV
Prayer Found in Water Pouring Down a Bus Window
Ultrasound Aubade
Cavity in the Rubenesque Façade
April Spill-Off
Parenting the Void
Magician
Bird Leaving a Branch
Meditation on Four West
From Her Lips to God’s Ears
Sunbathing
Girl in the Woods
Hare in My Garden
Pelvis with the Distance
The Get Away
Biographical Note
