firer7

THE LAUGH WE MAKE WHEN WE FALL

The Backwaters Press, 2002
Call Number: PS3556.I7 L38x 2002

The Iowa Review, another midwestern literary magazine, has also published Firer's work. "My Coat of Flowers" appeared in the winter 1995 issue and "Lilacs" in the summer 1996 issue.

Selection from "PEONIES"

The young girls walk by looking like wedding
cakes, art nouveau vases. They are
wearing only peonies. Exhausted
from wearing beauty, they night hurry
home to pull the flowers over their heads.
They learn that once you wear
a dress of peonies, your skin is forever
fragranced with the flowers' operatic sweet sadness. All
over the early June city, collapsed dresses of peonies
still as rugs incense bedrooms. Wild
canaries fly from the dresses' peony-scented puddles
and sing about the sleeping girls.

Have you heard the peonies' glossolalia?
Have you ever watched a black swallowtail's
gold and sky-blue pierced wings rearranged
by 44 mph winds, while it holds
to a Festiva Maxima Blush peony,
all the while maintaining all
its delicate migrating strength?
Have you seen your neighbor,
white-nightgowned, stop
the morning of her death
to bring greedily to her
face one last time the fragrance
of her greatly loved white Le Jours?

Looking at the sleeping new-
born in its white bassinet, one
would never believe, even if told in great detail,
what will happen to that infant during its life.
Or, if one did believe, one might go mad

....

From The Laugh We Make When We Fall (2002). Used with permission of the author.

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