The Size of a Bird

The Size of a Bird is an invocation of desire in times of violence and trauma. Refusing to shy away from difficult topics the poet tackles addiction, abuse, suicide, and sexual violence while infusing each word with a relentless drive for life. Seeking pleasure, these poems navigate dangerous terrain, staying with ambivalence and probing its depths. Queer femininity seeks heterosexual masculinity with varying results. First dates and one-night-stands, alleyways and coffee shops, forest floors and skateparks, these poems reveal a world pulsating with want and rife with pain. Holding both the reality of violence and the persistence of desire, these poems shine light on the pleasures and terrors of navigating sexuality from a space of femininity.

"Can poetry hold /the anxious thoughts of lovers?" This is only one of the many complex and gorgeous inquiries Clementine Morrigan asks in The Size of A Bird. Morrigan's own poetry decidedly holds anxious thoughts, yes, but also desire, and trauma and healing, uncertainty and wanting, undoing and becoming—her second collection of poetry holds all of these and more."

—Amber Dawn, author of Where the Words End and My Body Begins and How Poetry Saved My Life