Oh Orchid O’Clock

Poems that break down, expose, and reconsider our notions of time.

This collection speaks the language of the clock as a living instrument, exposing the sensory impacts of our obsession with time. In oh orchid o’clock, lyrics wind through histories like a nervous system through a body. The poems speak to how we let our days become over-clocked, over-transactional, and over-weaponed. With an instrumental sensibility, Endi Bogue Hartigan investigates what it is to be close to time-collective time, with its alarms and brutalities, and bodily time, intricate and familial. She considers how can we be both captured and complicit within systems of measurement, and she invites us to imagine how to break from, create, or become immune to them. Her poems use language to expose the face of the clock to reveal how gears press against interconnecting systems-economic, capitalist, astronomical, medical, governmental, and fantastical.

Endi Bogue Hartigan is the author of several books, including the poetry and photography chapbook seaweed sd treble clef;Pool [5 choruses], which was selected by Cole Swensen for the Omnidawn Open poetry book prize; and One Sun Storm, which was selected by Martha Ronk for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in West Branch, Interim, New American Writing, VOLT, Chicago Review, Bennington Review, and Denver Quarterly, among others. She lives in Portland, Oregon.