FULGURITE

A book of poetry about seeking beauty and meaning in a disintegrating world.

In this collection of poems, Kyle seeks the sacred in the modern world. She opens with a meditation on “species grief”; the speaker scrolls and scrolls on their phone, looking for answers that one can’t find on the internet. A childhood memory resurfaces while the speaker chops onions in “Confession.” The poet paints a cozy morning scene with coffee and cinnamon buns in “Hearth,” and a poem titled “Domesticity” is surprisingly sensual: “trace with your thumbnail / the line that knits my ribs, expect me to unzip. Expect / to find not blood, but hot melted nectar there.” The speaker of “Home/world” attempts to distract themself from commonplace horrors, such as mass shootings and the climate crisis, with online shopping, but to no avail: “I look up fluffy comforters. I want / to be comforted. the economy doesn’t comfort me.” Another poem features the lament, “I don’t know how to change / the world. I do know how to make good / blueberry pancakes.” The author concludes with the titular poem, in which fossilized lightning is a metaphor for the narrator: “Like this, I become / a heart that singes and sings, / full of luminous paths.” Kyle is a spellbinding poet who sometimes makes magic with words: A girl with a glitter camouflage backpack is a “sequined celebration,” a mouth is a “cotton candy paint smear,” and God “lands / as cricket song and hound barks / over dark yards. In moonstone sweat / that curls perfumed hair on her neck.” She vividly describes how the “turnip of my heart turns a little. rotates wetly,” and the way “Insects are oublietted in the lampshade.” The result is a tender, endearing narrative of what it means to be human in the modern world.

A soulful and often stunning poetry collection.