Now We Will Speak in Flowers speaks of the silences and languages that construct family, history, self, and our place on this earth as Micki Blenkush invites us

through "the narrow gate" of memory, praise, and loss. While these poems are rooted in natural imagery populated with lost minnows, abandoned quarries, stone-flecked fields, and "freshmelt mud," they also explore the complications of inheritance. Throughout the collection, silence and naming offer their revelatory charms. Threaded with nostalgia and perseverance, grit and gleam, Blenkush asks, "anyone can work / with rags and water. What about / some real transformation?" Real transformation is exactly what these poems are after. Read them, let them work their magic on you.

Micki Blenkush was selected as a 2017-2018 fellow in poetry for the Loft Literary Center's Mentor Series program and was a 2015 & 2019 recipient of grants awarded through the Central MN Arts Board, funded through the McKnight Foundation. Micki's writing has appeared in numerous journals including: Typishly, Cagibi, and Crab Creek Review. She lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota and works as a social worker.