"Amber Flora Thomas crafts poems of essential light—via photography, via the natural world. One poem asserts, 'I was low with ruptures I’d lived through, /regions of tear and ache.'  Ruptures—sexual violence, the 'jagged contusions' of seismic grief, the obliteration of half of herself by passing. This poet knows gnawing and hunger, knows that 'a current / must take the shore with it eventually.'  Before it does, we have her poems, wild as mountain lions, hot as Santa Ana winds, delicious as ripe blackberries 'wicked in fine gold hairs.'  Vibrant and sensual, these poems nourish us."—Peggy Shumaker, author of Cairn

"In Red Channel in the Rupture, Amber Flora Thomas writes about a world where no snake, bat, bug or any animal escapes her focus or her respectful awe. With the same intensity, she examines parents, friends, lovers, and self. Her poems, though often fierce, are gorgeous and lyrical in nature; and there's a mystery to them. Even as she's open and self-revealing, she's asking the reader to fathom not only what she's saying but what she's withholding. 'The dream shook in my throat,/ its taste waking me' she offers in one poem. And in another: 'The past entered/ here again,/ so I dive.' These are your clues. Follow them into this book and you will discover its beauty and understand its mysteries."—Susan Terris, Take Two: Film Studies

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