No More Flowers

Author: Stephanie Cawley

Publisher: Birds, LLC (2024)

In Stephanie Cawley’s No More Flowers, poetry serves as a resistance against suffering—their own, their loved ones’, humanity’s. A protest against meaninglessness. An antidote. The poems in No More Flowersbelieve in their ability to affect consequences with language, while being self-aware enough to know how absurd that belief is:

“That was just words. You could make them do anything, but also it was hard to make them do anything. Kite against blue clouds. Tree with green leaves. Street sign cut off on one edge so it says Cum Street. This was the machine into which I poured my sadness. The words were dead and they were alive.” 

These poems are a pleasure. And they insist that pleasure—and desire—are not an indulgence. They are a necessity to life: “I do want my friend to find / a place to sleep for longer than a few weeks. / I do want to put flowers in the mouths / of everyone I love and call it art.” The title declares No More Flowers, but inside the book, flowers proliferate. A queer, wild garden riots into bloom.