I would like to think that no one would die anymore
if we all believed in daisies

The fury of Flowers and Worms

Inspired by Anne Sexton and Heather Lewis both writers and incest survivors who died by suicide

emulsion paint and paper on glass 20cm x 10cm 2021

51 Anne Sexton and Heather Lewis suicide is after all the opposite of the poem

FLOWERS FOR ANNE desert moon flower cures poison

I have become a vase you can pick up and drop at will

Inanimate at last

The matrix

Annie died the other day never was there such a lay for amongst the dolls dad had

Anyone lived in a pretty how town with up so floating many bells down e e cummins

When what pursues is internal there is no escape

inner and outer forces constraining and the more expansive creative is dangerous

and the green voices urging her to die

freed by creative gift and compulsively controlled by it

women’s problems are not sexual but of identity

the great theme we all share is becoming ourselves of overcoming our mother and father

of assuming identities somehow

she accuses father of taking the you out of the me

In one poem she considers the distaste for looking

For John who begs me not to enquire further

died from Carbon monoxide poisoning wearing her Mother’s fur coat

FLOWERS FOR HEATHER MARIGOLDS (calms fretfull horses) DANDELIONS COW PARSLEY CLOVER

HEATHER LEWIS published three novels her last NOTICE posthumously.

Like Edward Hopper, Samuel Beckett, Ad Reinhardt, Camus, like early Raymond Carver or Patti Smith or all of Patricia Highsmith, from the start Heather Lewis’s truest subject was the void. Made to fall herself so early, she made The Fall her subject. Notice is the plainest statement of the greatest pain imaginable. It is notable for the loving polish of its Keaton-like deadpan, and for the hellish depth with which it understands all that one human being can inflict on the rest of us. Why? Because he can. It is a suicide note of genius

Died at 41 from Oxycontin overdose.

NOTICE

ONE

For the longest time I didn ‘t call it turning tricks. When I’d leave work cross the street

to the train station and, if some guy man I guess you’d really call him – had come off the train was on his way home I’d take his money.

did I notice the automation of awaking reaching and playing

it doesn’t matter a middle aged woman is arguing with her husband

and then she comes across polythene bags containing dead girl’s belongings

they sit in silence she rocks he stares at television

We’ll do it in his car. I’d work maybe twenty minutes. Get maybe twenty dollars

the Second Suspect

Afterwards Ingrid drew the girl a bath. She put oil in it, she’s brought from home because after all these years she could still convince herself that her husband brought her to beautiful hotels for normal reasons.

House Rules

I guess you’d say it started when I got kicked out of school.

It’s not like I did anything especially wrong.

In her first novel we feel the exquisite vulnerability of an adolescent girl struggling to find a safe place for herself. A M Homes