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cover of bruise bullet flower, grey background with white text
title page white with black text yellow end page
On the left page there is a black and white photograph. It is a close up of a black female presenting individual holding a bullet in their left hand and mouth. The right page has a poem by Natalie Diaz called Catching Copper in black text on a white background.
On the right page there is a black and white photo of a black male presenting individual leaning their body on a pile of bullets that are on a table with more bullets draped over their shoulder. On the left page there is a poem by Reginald Dwayne Betts called For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers in black text on a white background.
Colophon on the right page. black text on a white background

bruise bullet flower

$18.00 $0.00

Artist: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Authors: Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jericho Brown, Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Rickey Laurentiis, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Safiya Sinclair, Tracy K. Smith, R.A. Villanueva, and Phillip B. Williams.

Publisher: Woodland Pattern Book Center (2019)

Rachel Eliza Griffiths composed the photographs in bruise bullet flower in her Brooklyn studio over a two-day period in May 2018. Each project participant identifies as black or brown and queer, and the only direction Griffiths offered to each person as they arrived one-by-one was to explore and confront the materials she placed in the room.  

This chapbook was produced in celebration of bruise bullet flower’s debut exhibition at Woodland Pattern in spring 2019. The poems included in this volume were curated by Griffiths, who invited brown and black authors living in the United States to contribute their voices to the project.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ bruise bullet flower exhibition and chapbook publication were facilitated by Woodland Pattern as part of What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy, the Poetry Coalition’s third annual programming initiative on a theme of social importance. The question “What Is It, Then, Between Us?” comes from Walt Whitman’s poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”