Francesca Lia Block
Francesca Lia Block
Francesca Lia Blockis an American writer of adult and young-adult literature: fiction, short stories, screenplays and poetry. She is known best for the Weetzie Bat series — named after its first installment and her first novel, which she wrote while a UC Berkeley student, Weetzie Bat. She is known for her use of imagery, especially in describing the city of Los Angeles. One New York Times Book Review critic said, "Block writes about the real Los Angeles better than anyone...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth3 December 1962
CountryUnited States of America
the rain is coming. little sister, the night broke. the thunder cracked my brain finally. the rain is coming, i promise you. i didn’t mean to but your tears will bring life back. purple flowers grow, the colour blood looks in the veins. they’ll sprout out of my chest. i promise you they’ll crack the ground, grow over the freeways, down the slopes to the sea. i’ll be in their faces. i’ll be in the waves, coming down from the sky. i’ll be inside the one who holds you. and then i won’t be.
The circus tent was flowing pale in the rain like a fleshy flower lit from within. It seemed to bloom in the downpour. Drops of rain caught on Rafe's eyelashes, blinding him as the circus light struck them. He groped for the flap, that slit in the fabric that would reveal her to him. She was on the rope again, her skirt flashing with tiny mirrors, hair braided with petals. He looked up at her, dizzy with it, seeing her face framed in the parasol. There were bluish shadows around her eyes.
She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.
I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.
Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like.
I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.
She was no longer a slow dreamer watching the flowers grow. She was a warrior now. Warriors need something to fight for though, beside their lives, because otherwise their lives will not be worth it.
You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew ...
I'd sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies.
Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow she was really almost beautiful.
I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.
Metaphors are an interesting example of creating magic in prose.
You are in my blood. I cant help it. We can't be anywhere except together
Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.