The Girl Eating Oysters Stewart Florsheim

Formal Thinking by Mark Flowers

About the Artist

Mark Flowers is now mounting his fifth
one-person show with Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina. Throughout his career,
he has won numerous awards in both regional and national art competitions. He has taught art at the secondary and post-secondary levels for more than 24 years.

Flowers' Website

About the Poet

Stewart Florsheim has poetry in DoubleTake, Seattle Review, and Slipstream. His poetry is also included in the anthologies Unsettling America: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary American Poetry, Bittersweet Legacy, and And What Rough Beast. He is the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of Holocaust survivors.

Acknowledgments

Many of these poems originally appeared elsewhere: “The Girl Eating Oysters” in Round Table (1986), “My Father’s Autopsy” in DoubleTake (Fall 1996), “Exposed” in Rattle 14 (2000), “Thirst” in 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry (December 2001), “Survival” in The Seattle Review (2002), “Initiation” and “The Unseen” in Full Circle (2003), and “The Hairdresser” in The Great American Poetry Show (2004).

Contents

Mother to Son
The Elevator
Initiation
The Cub Scout
Parting Words
The Girl Eating Oysters
The Psychiatrist
Munch, on Dagny Juell
The Jewish Bride
My Five-Year-Old Poses the Question about God
Survival
Man on the Bus Gazes at his Roses
Exposed
My Father’s Autopsy
The Diagnosis
The Hairdresser
Thirst
The Unseen
Forsaken
Unspoken

PDF

Dedication

© 2004 by
Stewart Florsheim

April 2004 2River