NATIONAL POETRY MONTH WITH AMBER FLAME

p.y.t.

by Amber Flame

i want my joy

a bouncy-bottomed young thing,

with more energy than I can comprehend

for that which will bring me pleasure.

i want debaucherous joy, sweet,

slippery joy, a joy that can come

again and again and again unceasing.

i want to hit joy's freak button.

to get all

the way

down

&

nasty

with joy,

walk around smelling like joy

just came all over my face

and i couldn't get drunk on joy fast enough

to catch it all. i want joy

so delicious i mourn what spills

onto the floor, so i serve myself

another helping. i want joy

to want me. to ask me

in the middle of the night; to choose

me as the best

cuddle buddy. i want

joy to be fucking real.

for joy to show up

with a whole self. teach me

something about how to mend. show me

the best way to shine.

You can experience Amber's voice delivering this poem below.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Amber Flame is an award-winning multi-genre writer and interdisciplinary artist. Flame is the author of poetry collections Ordinary Cruelty and apocrifa, and deputy publisher and co-founder of Generous Press. Flame serves as program director for Hedgebrook and tours as a singer-songwriter with the original blues band, Last of the RedHot Mamas.

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, and YEFE NOF. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work has been published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, The Dialogist, Split This Rock, Black Heart Magazine, Sundress Publications, CityArts Magazine, FreezeRay, Redivider Journal and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame's first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce and perform her one-person play, Hands Above the Covers, a series of character monologues drawn from diverse real-life interviews. In early 2018, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle. She had her first solo exhibit in 2019 with a project entitled ::intrigue:: 8, a multimedia installation that featured musical compositions inspired by the text of 8 different poets with original video content as well as text from the original poems, through Jack Straw Production's Artist Support and New Media Gallery fellowships. Hugo House's 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry, Flame’s second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press. She’s currently making a film from her newest collection, supported by Black Cinema Collective. In addition to creating change as Program Director of Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor in community and for currently and formerly incarcerated women and youth while working on a third poetry collection, making music with her band Last of the RedHot Mamas, making art, and raising her awesome kid. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.

Learn more about Amber here