Mummies & Wildflowers

poems

Coming soon

Spanning four years of Minnesota weather, Mummies & Wildflowers moves through a full circle of seasons and comes out the other side in bloom.

These are poems that hold two things at once and refuse to choose: the preserved dead and the flower, the grief and the appetite, the lover and the microscope, the cold breeze and the reason to roll the window down anyway.

Poems by Claire Nyquist · Hardcover · 208 pages · November 2nd, 2026 · ISBN 979-8-9981658-0-1

Inside the book

The book open to Petrichor, pages 62 and 63, with a pen drawing of a cicada between the stanzas, in leaf shadow on a wooden floor.

From the book

Reprieve

They may say it’s strange to get married in a cemetery

But it’s beautiful here

So we dance in the face of death

Here we celebrate in the company of the departed

With a sugar skull and a bundle of marigolds

We’re all just ash on reprieve

We’re all just nibbles for bacteria in the end

But we’ve got each other

Hold tight to your loved ones in the face

Of bookended

Eternity.

The cover of Mummies & Wildflowers: the title in black serif capitals and the word poems above an 1862 Punch engraving of two skeletons waltzing, one in a wide gown, and the author's name, Claire Nyquist, below.