After a Failed Mediation (After Spicer's After Lorca), Amy Hirayama

"I’ve seen all kind of death.
I suggest starting with a birth.
Did you ever see one of those?"

In "After a Failed Mediation (After Spicer’s After Lorca)" by Amy Hirayama, Thai food bought in the second poem becomes leftovers by the seventh. A lover comes and goes; a life once guarded is now surrendered to influence and the crowd. In previous work, Amy demonstrated an effortless command of the genuine laugh—knowing exactly when and how to trigger it. Here, that laugh is sucked back in. The body, rendered in blood and teeth, experiences more pain than joy though with no less celebration.

The title’s three separations and three influences act as a catapulting muse, allowing Amy to reveal a brilliant, sharper side of herself: cutting, jaded, and entirely unburdened by fools. Her friends remain present throughout the journey, and she honors them here with equal intensity.

In her previous chapbooks from FFFAFFF Press, the collaboratively written "Her Prophecies of Cake" and "The Holy Feast of Innovation" (with Sky O’Brien) she appears as a writer focused on play and imagination through collaboration. In her solo selection "Haripoetry" she writes poems to the bright, sometimes illusive, Haribo candies, working the theme to write about family, gender and motherhood. After a Failed Mediation introduces a different version of the poet and in our opinion delivers what the people want: honesty at the peaks of emotional processing.

Limited run of 50.