Escape to Nowhere
by Flower Conroy

Poems

"In Flower Conroy’s debut collection of poems, she writes, “some babies are relieved to be born, freed from their claustrophobic sleeping bags,” heralding the Bildungsroman in verse this book will be. Told with pith, wit, and full of desire and heat, these poems seek to understand and forgive. In the wildly self-aware poem, “EVELYN’S BEDROOM WHILE EVELYN WATCHED TV & ATE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH ICE CREAM OUT OF THE CONTAINER,” Conroy’s speaker says, “Upset? I wasn’t upset. I was hysterical. /Inconsolable. Overly emotional. Wrecked. //Then I got over it,” and when in the final poem, “Only Idiots Get Tattoos,” she writes, “My favorite tattoo’s/ the one on the back of my neck in memory of my father’s/ passing: an upturned horseshoe, carried up, by wings” we know how hard won, how complex the journey has been, and, too, that the next leg of the poet’s journey has only just begun. Conroy’s searing, musically charged poems, dirty, hopeful, and sometimes cuttingly funny, will please and illumine with singular muscularity and a dash of black mascara."

--Laura McCullough

"Flower Conroy is a poet who relishes with equal ferocity the "cheese grater hood" of the blasted ceiling overhead and the bent light of the sky beyond it. She writes with a sly and angular directness, holding up to our startled scrutiny objects suddenly aglow with pain, with rash choices, with small, unforgettable and brilliantly torqued stories. In poem after poem, with fearless, whacked power and visceral clarity, she explores and celebrates facets of reality most of us fail to notice."

--Catherine Doty

Excerpts:
Apple Core of My Father's Eye

You'd Be Surprised How Fast a Flying Pig Can Fly