To Think of a Match: Poems

A gripping oscillation between the manufactured and the natural, between capitalism and truth.

To Think of a Match is a collection of daydreams from behind the eyes of retail clerks, corporate mascots, ghosts of 49ers, and sundry others. Situated in Minnesota's Twin Cities, home of the Mall of America and the glistening Bde Maka Ska, these poems explore the intimate collisions of class and labor, spiraling out from the recent history of the Gold Rush and into the near future of asteroid mineral mining and beyond. Halee Kirkwood searches for possibilities of a postcapitalist future in our most squirmy, slimy, and wriggly forms of earthly life. What can invertebrates teach us about the ways humanity organizes labor, creativity, and community? What does it mean to have a body caught between economies and ecologies? Contending with subjects ranging from Sappho to Petco and envisioning a new pastoral that is honest about the human and nonhuman domains we are building today, To Think of a Match yearns for a poetics that thrives between shifts.

"Poems full of beetles, beasts, zombies and goddesses present us with dozens of new ways to consider labor in an urban and Indigenous landscape. Dramatic, relentless and sharply crafted, Kirkwood's collection sounds a new generation's gong. It's a joy to be a few hours in the reverberations of these poems." --Heid E. Erdrich

"Kirkwood has crafted a tremendously poignant collection. At once gentle and bold, To Think of a Match is grounded in the strength of Kirkwood as a Native and a survivor." --Jennifer Elise Foerster

"Beware. These poems move like a fast fire casting light on the compromises you didn't realize you had made. To Think of a Match traces a personal haunting--fire and homelessness. Then, with the insight of one who understands precarity, the poet interrogates everyday tensions: between comfort and care for the planet, between the interior and exterior measures of success, between the real and the fake, between shopping mall satisfaction and spiritual homing. Halee Kirkwood wields an impressive intelligence to craft poems from non-human perspectives, and wields a generous humor to delight us on our own journeys. The glow of these poems will linger." --Kimberly Blaeser