TWO OUT OF THREE FALLS (paperback)

Clem Flowers (they/ them) is a poet, soft-spoken southern transplant, low-rent aesthete, pizza man lover, & dramatic tenor living in a mountain’s shadow in Home of Truth, Utah with their awesome wife & sweet kitty. Hella queer & nb poetry editor at Blue River Review, with publication credits including: Olney Magazine, Blue River Review, The Madrigal, Pink Plastic House Journal, Bullshit Lit, Corporeal, Holyflea, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Warning Lines Magazine. They are the author of chapbooks “Stoked & Thrashing” (Alien Buddha Press), “eating rain//matchstick graveyard” (Alien Buddha Press), and this one. Found on Twitter: @clem_flowers.

"Clem Flowers challenges us to step into a three-dimensional, four-turnbuckled world with 'Two Out Of Three Falls.' For Flowers, there is little difference between the betrayals of Hamlet and those of tag team wrestlers, and the thing that binds them together is the experience of the audience. Being ringside for Flowers’s ‘poetry in motion’ is to see a life form at the foot of each fall. Flowers’s strength is in the details, where we either learn—or are grimly reminded—of the ‘early 2000s coolness’ inherent in the letter Z, and we see how people, much like Mick Foley’s many in-ring alter egos, contain multitudes. The ebb and flow of friendships is reflected in their peers’ acceptance of America’s finest native art form, as Flowers first makes friends, then feels ostracized, and then bonds again by watching professional wrestling. Clem Flowers’s poetry makes for a thrilling main event." 

— Andrew Daugherty, novelist, editor, and pro wrestling enthusiast 

"If you know anything about the world of professional wrestling, you know that #1: If it's not over the top, you're not doing it right, and #2: for every winning champ, there's a heel to vanquish. In 'Two Out of Three Falls,' Clem Flowers has given us all of this and more. With a vivid mix of poetry and prose, they bring us back to the days of sitting with a two-liter of Mountain Dew in a dimly lit room, cheering our faves and cursing those who dared to stand against them. This is a book for those who have sought escape in something fantastical. Clem has reminded us of how it feels for the bad guys to lose, and it feels goddamn good." 

— Kimberly Wolf, poet 

“Clem Flowers’s 'Two Out Of Three Falls' is a collection of poems soaked in pop culture bliss, an electric book steeped in youth and the history that follows. Clem’s writing is frantic and dizzying, hypnotizing and melodic, and much like a perfect pop record, after finishing 'Two Out Of Three Falls', you will have no choice but to pick these poems back up and start the book all over again.”

— Leigh Chadwick, author of “Your Favorite Poet”