Fire Wheel

By Sharmila Voorakkara

Publication Year: 2005

The poems in Fire Wheel dip in and out of family history and myth; the subjects of its poems are as varied as Helen of Troy, and Audrey, a Fury who makes her rounds at Laundromats, proclaiming the coming Armageddon. “I, too, am manmade, born of rib and / rayon,” says Audrey, “and I’ll tell you just what / your’e not above.” By turns elegiac and humorous, Fire Wheel’s poems also question the nature of family and identity. In “Poem for My Father, Once a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, Now an Ascetic” a daughter reflects on her father, a man who abandons his family in search of spiritual enlightenment. “In which sage life/ will I find you?” she asks. “My Suicide Uncles” traces the crossing of immigrants between the old country and the new, and its sometimes devastating results. Whether the poems are about circus sideshow performers, delinquents, or mythic figures, the poems of Fire Wheel try to blend the real with the imagined, to find the place where the two worlds intersect to create an ever-shifting borderland of the self.

Published by: The University of Akron Press

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Book Details

E-ISBN-13: 9781935603856
E-ISBN-10: 193560385x
Print-ISBN-13: 9781931968218
Print-ISBN-10: 1931968217

Page Count: 90
Publication Year: 2005

Series Title: Akron Series in Poetry
Series Editor Byline: Elton Glaser, Editor

Fire Wheel

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Tow

The Holy Men of Jersey

Poem to My Father, Once a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, Now an Ascetic

Tin Man

My Suicide Uncles

Dogs

In a Lost Language

Amanuensis

Ophelia among the Fish

Saint Breakdown

Helen of Troy

Menelaus

Helen Tells All

Life with Paris

Epilogue

Monologue of the Vanishing Woman

Mercy

The World’s Smallest Woman Speaks

Talking to Myself

Bread and Cinderella

Audrey, the Laundromat Fury, Says

His

The Orchard’s Daughter

I Grow Lighter at Night

Cleaning

Dusk

Reflections on Toledo, Black and White Plate, Page 518 in The History of Europe

Luck

For the Tattooed Man

The Beneficence of Spinning Bodies

Palmer Method

For Herman, Second Grade

Mr. Hatpin, Meet Ms. Mannequin

Bridgewalker

Still Life with Falling Garbage

Kicking the Dog

They Got All-Night Muzak Playing at the Strip Mall

The Transvestite and His Mother

Brother Zero

Men in White Suits

On Atlantis

Freaks

Man with Baseball Bat

Ditch Music

Goat’s Head Godhead

The Monologues Men Draw

Big Sky, Little Man

The Flight of the Insurance Men

Apology

Emissaries from Other Worlds

The Last Nickel Dance

About

Research Areas

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