The debut chapbook by Jasmine Flowers reaches for horizons near and far

Jasmine Flowers, Horizon (​Flower Press, 2021)

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Landscapes can be hard to tell apart. In her debut chapbook, Jasmine Flowers orients, disorients, re-orients – and thoroughly entertains her reader.

The long poem starts with voices ‘as they mingle in the wind’. Within two dozen pages, the reader traverses stars, miracles, ‘time, dirt, bone, wind, ash’, a fountain of youth, a leaky pipe and ‘the inkblot borderline’. The journey is as dizzying as you might expect.

The sand is gritty — tiny rocks,
shells, and bones. Is this hell or
paradise? Beach or desert? One
sand or the other? Is there even
a difference?

Lessons can be learned from life’s hardest moments. The aphoristic couplet that opens the fourth section – ‘The tightrope was flimsy, | which taught me a lot’ – is gloriously understated. The proximity of death, the challenges faced throughout life and the learning opportunities that emerge from even the worst scenarios combine in this striking image. The poet goes on to add:

Balance is a fragile line,
and I don’t care for it.
It’s never cared for me,
and we like it that way.

Balance may a philosophical foe for Flowers but equilibrium is exactly what she achieves in her poetry. In front of the setting sun, the poet weaves carefully balanced images, subtle wordplay and a feeling that there is more to her words than first meets the eye.

Magic and the possibility of deliverance recur. Sometimes, however, these charms are thwarted. Asking for the world sometimes leaves the asker wanting:

Name a star or two for me.
I named the universe: You.

In a world that seems ever more fragmented, fluid and overwhelming, the effort of naming is not a futile gesture. It is not easy, though. The reader is left pondering how we can ever define such vastness. What is left when every landmark has been stripped back and all we see is empty space? And what are we supposed to do with all the gaps?

I’m sitting
here waiting, and I hope you notice
— me — or the spaces in between
the absence. Either one is fine.

For all the grandiose, galaxy-level language, the best writing is often the simplest. The poet succeeds when she moves from gigantic to everyday; in the second section, she disarms the reader with an image of brutal directness:

Does that make
me a pencil? Is that why my life feels so
smudgy?

Amid the ephemeral and the everchanging, ‘Horizon’ is a chapbook that cannot easily be erased.

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Jasmine Flowers, Horizon (​Flower Press, 2021). Available here.