ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

HALEE KIRKWOOD is a 2023–2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, an Indigenous Nations Poets fellow, a Loft Mentor Series fellow, and the recipient of the James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. They are a direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

REVIEWS

“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, author of Verb Animate

“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, author of The Maybe-Bird

“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, author of Ancient Light and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Night Shift

Self-Portrait as a Katamari Damacy Ball

I Dreamed of Embers

My Mother Says She’s Proud of Me

Psychogeography

Small Talk

Resume Poltergeist

Watercolors

For the Woman Dancing at El Tequila

I Didn’t Need to Read Communist Theory to Know

Pastoral Fragments as Bullseye the Target Dog

Novelty Sonnets

The Throat Is a River

II. The Colony

Moon Jelly Ode (At the Mall of America)

Magpie Love Song for the Bag of Plastic Bags

Syrinx

Self-Portrait as Petco Fish

In Anticipation of Brood X, I’m Making Public All My Teenage Sorrows

Lacewing Aubade (Since U Been Gone)

They Came Here Because It Was Once an Important Place in Their Lives

The Pom-Pom Crab

Aphrodite’s Beetle

III. Lunch Break with Sappho

It’s All Over Facebook, Nextdoor, Public Radio

O Overgrown Sappho

Lunch Break with Sappho

Dolly and Sappho, Nine to Five

Meditating at Bde Maka Ska

Trickle-Down Economics

IV. Gold Dust Days

All Water Desires Return to the Ocean

Two Angels

The Prospector and the Sphinx

Filson Clothes for the Man Who Knows

Gold Dust Days

Mania

Victor Gruen Laments the Asphalt Sea

Mall Walkers

Upon Learning That Asteroid Bennu Has a Market Value of $669M

Matriphagy

How I Want to Be Remembered

Acknowledgments

Gratitude

Notes