THE YEAR OF YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
The Year of Yellow butterflies (The Blog)
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"Terrible to dress in the clothes
of a period that must end."--Frank Bidart 

"You must remember that certain things die out for a while/ so they can be remembered with affection later on." --John Ashbery

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It was the year that birds' songs taught little girls how to dance and fly.

4/2/2015

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Bluebirds followed girls on their way to school. The girls would start out walking. But since they were so young and new to the planet, they understood the language of the birds so easily. The girls would hear tiny bluebirds and also multicolored hummingbirds that flew up and sang into their ears. They would twist a toe forward, then slide a heel back. Then snapping their fingers they punctuated the birds' songs and their forward motion. The next step took the girls slightly off the ground. They swung the other leg forward in the air, knees bent as if bicycling, but only no bicycle and half of their weight lifted off the ground. In the next step, they jutted one hip forward and rose completely off the ground, feet at an angle with toes higher than heels. From there they broke out into jazzy individual dances. Then they glided forward in synchronized arm stretches and twinkled toes. On snow days their shadows danced violet blue on the curves of white snow. In the spring their shadows lay flat grey over green side grass and tiny flower buds of red, orange, blue, and yellow. Bees abuzzed in the air with them. Half a block before the schoolyard the girls dipped back down, book bags first, that pulled their weight to the sidewalk. They trotted across the quiet street and joined the other kids in the school yard, the other kids being the boys. The boys who were the only witnesses to their flights, adults were not able to see them fly.


--Shelley Marlow
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Shelley Marlow’s novel Two Augusts In a Row In a Row is out on Publication Studio.  http://www.publicationstudio.biz/books/294
1 Comment

    Author

    Hi. I'm Joanna Fuhrman. This is a prose poetry/flash fiction blog in conversation with my  serial prose poem "The Year of Yellow Butterflies" (The Year Of Yellow Butterflies, Hanging Loose Press 2015). I had fun writing these poems about fads and trends from imaginary pasts. If you would like to add your own section, write me and I can post it (along with a short bio). Start with "It was the year...."  
    "In this extraordinary book, Fuhrman seamlessly oscillates between illusion and reality, childhood and maturity, the animal kingdom (a "babbling...walrus," a "creaky bird," a "bunny rabbit") and technology ("a baby's rebooted brains," "Virgil's internet").  She gives new life to the prose poem.  The Year of Yellow Butterflies is killer--not only Fuhrman's best book to date, but her most poignant.  "--Noelle Kocot

    "With the impish charm of an illusionist and the dazzling patter of a tummler in a Borscht Belt resort, Joanna Fuhrman suspends our expectations in The Year of Yellow Butterflies, sending us head over heels into zones of cosmic and technological bafflement and sudden parabolic grief....in this book full of brilliant predicaments and pleasures."—Rachel Loden
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