Instructions for the Proper Cremation of Your Grief Amber Decker $8.99 62 pages Folkways Press 2022 I've followed Amber Decker and her poetry for some time now with respect and admiration. Instructions for the Proper Cremation of Your Grief, is a smartly produced 4-by-6 perfect-bound chapbook from Folkways Press, which reads as well as it looks. Take as an example the poem "Coal Miner's Daughter," a dangerous title with all of its cultural associations. Decker uses them to full advantage, the details of mystery beginning to coalesce and eventually blossom from the initial lines excerpted below to the in the final two lines of the poem: "the crooked gravestones/of every small-town churchyard." I am a lover of all the dark places the headlights of my car can never touch. My empty womb is jealous of the warm orchards where the black-eyed children of Appalachia gather at night to pick apples with their skeletal fingers by the light of the moon. ...
Like the title says.