#BrokenSpineReads – Horizon by Jasmine Flowers

Jasmine Flowers’ Horizon presents readers with a haunting exploration of identity, memory, and place. Through a lyrical journey across landscapes that blur between physical and emotional terrains, Flowers crafts a collection both intimate and universal. Her poems echo with a quiet power, where loneliness, longing, and existential questioning interweave to create an impactful and reflective reading experience.

In Horizon, Flowers successfully navigates the emotional depth of human experience, particularly in relation to themes of time, displacement, and survival. These themes are explored through vivid imagery and nuanced symbolism, where natural elements such as earth, water, and sky serve as metaphors for inner transformation and growth. The work demonstrates the poet’s ability to balance introspection with an awareness of the broader cultural and historical narratives that shape the self.

One of the collection’s central themes is the tension between absence and presence, explored with remarkable sensitivity in the poem I can hear the voices as they mingle in from the first section. The speaker listens to voices carried by the wind, as though the past is woven into the very air they breathe. Flowers writes, ‘You used to sing to put me to sleep. / I’d dream of your voice, those hums / and soft words ringing somewhere deep / inside of me.’ The absence of the figure who once sang becomes palpable, as the speaker now longs for even a brief connection, ‘won’t you sing me a song again? Won’t you stay with me for a spell?’ The repetition of these lines amplifies the speaker’s yearning and suggests that absence can sometimes be more present than physical proximity. Flowers captures a universal sense of loss and longing, where memory becomes an emotional landscape as vast and untouchable as the horizon itself.

In contrast, the poem I’m no different from any of you delves into questions of time and existential movement, where the speaker grapples with their place in the world and the forces that propel them forward. The line ‘What am I running from?’ reveals a tension between escape and endurance. The notion of running towards or away from something is paralleled with the speaker’s relationship to time, as ‘Quickly! it’s still a long way to where I’m going.’ Here, Flowers skilfully captures the paradox of human existence — the urge to move forward while simultaneously feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of time’s passage. The poem reflects a broader philosophical enquiry, one that acknowledges the weight of the past while moving with uncertainty toward an ever-shifting future.

Another striking aspect of Horizon is its focus on the natural world, where landscapes act as reflections of internal states. In the poem My eyes are misty mornings from section III, the imagery of rivers and canyons carved by tears on the speaker’s face reveals a deep connection between emotion and environment. Flowers writes, ‘my eyes are misty mornings / full of salty freshwater tears / making streams that make rivers that make canyons / on my brown, dusty face.’ The natural imagery of erosion reflects how experiences of sorrow and pain shape and carve the speaker’s identity over time. The link between earth and the body is recurrent throughout the collection, suggesting that human experience is as much about the landscapes we inhabit as it is about the inner emotional terrain we navigate.

This connection is further explored in the poem I draw crooked lines in this dirt, where the speaker’s attempt to impose order on the natural world through drawing lines in the dirt is met with resistance. The Place, as the speaker calls it, erases the lines as quickly as they are drawn, signifying the futility of control over nature and perhaps over the self. Flowers asks, ‘Does that make me a pencil? Is that why my life feels so smudgy?’ The poet’s skill lies in her ability to blend philosophical musings with concrete imagery, creating a layered meaning that invites the reader to reflect on the impermanence of life and the transience of our efforts to make sense of it.

Flowers’ work stands out not only for its thematic depth but also for its precise and evocative language. Throughout Horizon, the poet’s use of sound and rhythm enhances the emotional resonance of the text. In The heel of the earth from section II, the poem opens with a series of tactile and elemental images: ‘repeating layers of time, dirt, bone, wind, ash, fire, and rain.’ The repetition of these earthy substances mirrors the cycles of time and transformation that underpin much of the collection. The poem unfolds with a rhythmic cadence, reinforcing the idea of life as a process of continuous change, where ‘archaic moaning inside a floorless waiting room’ evokes the endless, almost primordial quality of existence. Flowers’ use of sound here — the long vowels and sibilant consonants — creates a sense of the earth’s slow, unrelenting breath.

Similarly, in A little magic to send me on, Flowers returns to the theme of transformation, this time invoking clay as a metaphor for creation and rebirth. The speaker’s plea, ‘let me mould it in my hands. Clay forms masterpieces,’ highlights the poet’s belief in the power of art to shape and reshape both the self and the world around us. The speaker, standing in awe of The Place, acknowledges both the beauty and harshness of the land, reflecting a broader sense of awe and reverence for life itself. Here, as in much of Horizon, Flowers strikes a balance between the deeply personal and the universally relatable, inviting wide readers of contemporary poetry to consider their own place within the larger cycles of existence.

In Horizon, Jasmine Flowers offers a profound and poignant exploration of time, place, and the self. Her masterful use of language, coupled with her ability to weave together personal and collective histories, results in a collection that is both meditative and expansive. For anyone interested in contemporary poetry, Horizon is a must-read — a work that challenges, moves, and ultimately resonates long after the final page is turned.

About the Author:

Jasmine Flowers is a well-watered writer from Birmingham, AL. Like her namesake, she loves to smell heavenly and bloom widely. Her debut poetry chapbook, “Horizon,” is available from Flower Press. Previously, she served as poetry editor for Variant Literature. She received her BA in English from the University of Alabama. Her poems appear in River Mouth Review, Cypress Literary Journal, perhappened mag, and other publications.