Kimberly Ann Priest
ISBN: 978-1-949099-11-9
35 pages


"In Parrot Flower, Kimberly Ann Priest writes through the process of survival, what it takes for a person to live with trauma and all the real ways in which it manifests — art and casual sex, cutting and therapy, fear and a pair of comfortable shoes. In this collection, we realize that no part of recovering is clean or easy, but as Priest reminds us, 'People do you know. [Survive.]'"

— Erin Elizabeth Smith, author of Down

"Like the eponymous flowers, the poems in Parrot Flower oscillate, beautifully, between the familiar and strange, between the therapeutic and poisonous. Following the logic of both trauma and poetry, the speakers attempt to "re-see the same thing / over and over again,' memory and desire flickering beneath the surface of their conversations. It's unsettling and cinematic, as if, on the other side of these pages, someone was holding a showing of Hiroshima Mon Amour."

— Sam Cha, author of The Yellow Book

"Kimberly Ann Priest's Parrot Flower blooms out of the mouth of sexual trauma, juxtaposing the botanical with vivid ghost-like imagery, creating a fragmented retelling of a couple both broken by their histories and seeking to heal. 'Such is the fabric of this journey—/' she writes, 'the meaning of a flower, the meaning of/torn tissue, the meaning of/[silence &] everything.' The reader, sweeping up petals line by line, reflects on the masterful enjambment and craft employed in these poems while holding each fallen piece to the light."

— Kai Coggin, author of Periscope Heart, Wingspan and Incandescent

"What I most appreciate in this work is the recognition that art is clearly no substitute for therapy — and therapy is not depicted as an easy 'solution.' Grief here is an inescapable weather — every moment has, if not the feel of rain, the smell. In a poetry that is as compassionate as it is beautiful, Priest shows us how even attempting to name a trauma is a nonlinear effort, a heart’s ongoing work."

— Chen Chen, author of When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities

* What a lot of people call the heart, her therapist calls story. As in: She cannot get the hand out of her vagina so she whispers a lot, collects an abundance of knick-knack ceramic kittens, sits mournfully at her bedroom window until dreams of her mother force her to dress in color, learn ballet. Instead, she wanders the grocery store aisles groping bags of cat food, though her new boyfriend is allergic, he says.