Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower

Sarah Lindsay

In her fourth collection of poetry, National Book Award finalist and Lannan Fellowship winner Sarah Lindsay presents a lyric menagerie of bizarrely imagined personae and historic figures, revealing their long-held secrets alongside surprising scientific subjects and discoveries layered into quirky, dark-edged, sometimes macabre but always intimate and graceful poems. Imbued with a buoying sense of respect for the different, the unexpected, and the challenging, Lindsay’s poems are alive with wonder. And when asked the obvious question about the title, you can say, “A ‘bone-eating snotflower’ is the inelegant slang for the worm-like creature, Osedax mucofloris, that feeds on the carcasses of minke whales in the North Sea.”

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ISBN: 9781556594465

Format: Paperback

The Arms of a Marvelous Squid

“Let not your heart be troubled,” the wise man said,

“for love is stronger than you know.”

I was sixteen, seeking lessons in rainbow posters,

love was stronger than I knew. So was fear.

So was sorrow that hauls a heart’s bellrope

again and again. So were the bonds

in a drop of water; so was the force of gravity

leading the drop from eye to mouth

or pulling a car with bad brakes downhill

or abetting a body stood on a chair

with a rope around its neck.

So was the force of life in microscopic creatures

deep in solid Antarctic lakes,

or boiled in acid on the Pacific floor,

or duking it out between sickness and health

in a human intestine. And the life

in the devious roots of dandelions,

an elephant’s trunk or a flea’s hind legs.

Stronger than I knew was the desire sometimes

to move quietly through harmless days,

eating from a plate, buying stamps or a toothbrush.

Which was more remarkable,

the breadth and depth of my ignorance,

or the strength in the arms of a marvelous squid

that hung in my vision, uncurled as if

about to dissolve, then whipped one length

around my wrist, preventing me

from running away, preventing me

from rising to breathe,

reminding me of love?

About the Author

Copper Canyon has published two books by former Lannan Fellow Sarah Lindsay: Twigs and Knucklebones (chosen by Poetry editor Christian Wiman as a “Favorite Book of 2008”) and Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower (a 2013 Lannan Literary Selection). Her previous books, both in the Grove Press Poetry Series, are Primate Behavior, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Mount Clutter. She is a recipient of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize. Sarah has worked as a copy …

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