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April is coming. So are the poems.

The NaPoWriMo graphic for this year is a black and white photo of a rock wall with a rainbow eye painted on it. It says NaPoWriMo at the top in black type, and at the bottom in white says (20 years of looking out for poetry).

What is #NaPoWriMo, you wonder? It’s an unofficial, unaffiliated poetry game played annually by poets all over the world (#GloPoWriMo). It grew, sort of accidentally, out of a personal challenge Maureen Thorson set for herself one April, many moons ago in the poetry-blog days of yore. I joined her the following year, and others did too, and soon it became an annual, organic free-for-all, a lively everybody-is-invited event. 

Maureen’s idea has proven so popular, people have assumed it’s hosted by some Official Org or Institution, but nope. It’s entirely noncommercial and unsponsored. She’s created a site—napowrimo.net—and accompanying Twitter account to share daily prompts and featured participants every day in April, which is really nice of her. 

Bloof always hosts a handful of our authors on our blog, and this April will be no exception. Wanna play? You can join in on your own site or social media account. See napowrimo.net for the details.

PS: This is the 20th year!

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AWP 2023: Where to find Bloof poets

Bloof, the press, will not be at AWP. But Bloof, the poets, will be! And you can still grab some bookfair deals online.

VIRTUAL BOOKFAIR at bloofbooks.com
March 7–13. All paperbacks in bundle deals: 2 for $25, 3 or more for $10 each.
+ Free shipping on all orders over $25 (US only).
This virtual bookfair is for everyone, whether or not you’re attending the conference.

Thursday, March 9

DANIELLE PAFUNDA
Family Trees in the Enchanted Forest: Fairy Tales & Intergenerational Trauma
12:10 p.m. Room 427

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
Two or More Become One: Writing in Collaboration Across Genre
3:20 p.m. Room 337

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
6:00 p.m. Slip In Beltown Gallery
2301 1st Street
Orchestrate Your Whole Fucking Life! reading

IRENE VÁZQUEZ
Muzzle Magazine reading
7:00 p.m. Loving Room
1400 20th Ave

Friday, March 10

IRENE VÁZQUEZ
10:00 a.m. Bookfair signing
Take Me to the Water chapbooks + broadsides of Glory from Above
Riot in Your Throat table (T1522)

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
2:00 p.m. Museum of Museums
900 Boylston Ave
University of Louisiana Lafayette and Sam Houston University Graduate Student Reading

DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE
7:30 p.m. Alley Mic
1922 Post Alley
Apogee, Diagram, March Fadness, Texas Review, TRP reading

Saturday, March 11

A pastel radial gradient background with white and lavender text giving reading details and readers’ names:

Extravaganza, an offsite reading.

Saturday, March 11, 3:30–5:00 p.m. at the Crescent Lounge, 1413 E. Olive Way, Seattle.

READERS
Ginger Ko
Irene Vázquez
Katie Jean Shinkle
Natalie Eilbert
Danielle Pafunda
Min Kang
Jessica Rae Bergamino
Jackson Bliss
Abby Hagler
Megan Kaminski
Nilufar Karimi
Sarah Minor
Olivia Muenz
JD Pluecker
Claire Marie Stancek
Dennis James Sweeney
+ karaoke to follow!
Event graphic for Essay Press, Noemi Press + Bloof Books Extravaganza

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, GINGER KO
1:45 p.m. Room 437
#FeelsBad: Writing Discomfort and Pessimism in Genre

GINGER KO, IRENE VÁZQUEZ, DANIELLE PAFUNDA, KATIE JEAN SHINKLE, NATALIE EILBERT
Essay Press, Noemi Press & Bloof Books Extravaganza reading
(see graphic above for the full list of readers!)
3:30 p.m. Crescent Lounge
1413 E. Olive Way

NATALIE EILBERT
6:00 p.m. Elliot Bay Book Company
1521 10th Ave.
Copper Canyon 50th Anniversary Celebration

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ON DREAMS by Maureen Thorson: Now available for preorder

22% off through March!

After being diagnosed, or misdiagnosed, with a rare, “invisible” eye condition that causes blind spots, Maureen Thorson set out to write a self-portrait in a broken mirror: a “mirror of my suffering,” wry and poignant, fragmented and necessarily incomplete. On Dreams is allusive, searching, and self-arguing, a lyric meditation on reality, truth, illusion—the warped reality of the mirror image and everything we “see”—and the illusion, “the dream,” of control. 

—Elisa Gabbert

After a pandemic delay and the intervening release of another book by Maureen last year (from our friends at Veliz), we’re finally ready to spring this fascinating book on you, dear readers!

On Dreams is as much a personal exploration on reality and illness as it is a richly documented commonplace book—the notes on the text are integral to the way the essays move, crisscrossed with rabbit holes and byways, with citations ranging from Aristotle to tweets. As Kwoya Fagin Maples puts it: “This work won’t allow itself to be pinned, even by its author. It follows its own north.” We can’t wait to get it into your hands.

Read “Confessions of a Pareidoliac,” an essay from On Dreams, in On the Seawall.

Preordered copies begin shipping in mid April, ahead of the official release in May. Read more about this fascinating collection.

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February Flash Sale! Nikki Wallschlaeger

From now till March 1, we’re offering both of Nikki’s Bloof books at a hearty discount—plus a limited edition art print!

CRAWLSPACE is “a series of sonnets that consciously disrupt their own formal limits, discovers the violence embedded in our most familiar structures: mortgages, meals, rooms, houses, family relationships, and language itself. Wallschlaeger’s poems feel timely, as the links between property ownership, alienated labor, and the history of black slavery in the United States (‘Greasy gangrene hamburger wrapper of a country,’ in her words) become clearer by the day. She deploys a new vocabulary for talking about the legacies of slavery and white supremacy as they manifest in daily life — a vocabulary that is as damning as it is lush, as rich with sound as it is bright with image.” —Iris Cushing, HYPERALLERGIC

I HATE TELLING YOU HOW YOU REALLY FEEL is a full-color hardcover version of Nikki’s groundbreaking meme-poem chapbook, first published by Bloof in our handmade series, which sold out almost instantly. This graphic chapbook features Julia, the 70s doll from Mattel based on Diahann Carroll, styled and photographed against colorful backdrops. “The writing in I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel is, by turns, thrillingly allusive and thrillingly frank. […] Wallschlaeger’s is a poetics of multiplication and plurality.” —Toby Altman, ENTROPY

I DO HAVE AN ABNORMAL AMOUNT OF DREAMS: A limited-edition print featuring one of the graphic chap memes! 12 x 16 inches in brilliant color on lightly textured 100% cotton fine art paper. A rare opportunity—available till March 1 only. Once they’re gone, they’re gone! FREE shipping on orders including this print. Enter FREESHIP at checkout to receive the discount. (Shipping on these is direct from our printer, approximately 2 weeks from order date.)

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Happy new year!

Huge thanks to all our readers for your support in 2022. It was a great comeback from our pandemic slowdown, and by our count we’ve handmade and mailed almost 500 new chapbooks! And there’s lots more to come.

As of December 19, all pending preorders were filled. We took a little break for the holidays (ahhhh), and now are shipping normally as of January 3.

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Chapbook Shipping Status Update

A hot pink graphic with black hatchmarks and yellow text saying “handmade poetry is worth the wait.”

Here is the scoop for this week. We are in the home stretch for both of these now. Please remember that orders are filled in the order they were received.

This week, November 28–December 2, we are working to fill orders that came in on the following dates:

  • Take Me to the Water by Irene Vázquez, from Oct 24 on
  • I Prefer the Forests Making Blankets from Themselves by CAConrad, from Oct 10 on

We appreciate your patience! I will email you with your tracking number when your package has gone out. I will update the email autoreply each week as necessary, so feel free to check back.

Thank you!
Shanna

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Important Chapbook Shipping Update

An announcement graphic in yellow with multicolored abstract shapes around the edges. The text says: Chapbook Shipping Status. This week, November 7–11, we are working to fill orders that came in on the following dates: Take Me to the Water preorders placed Oct 10–15. I Prefer the Forests Making Blankets from Themselves preorders placed Oct 3–10.

Because y’all have been so enthusiastic, I have a lot of chapbooks to make! I’ve set up an email autoresponder to answer status questions and will update it each week until I’ve caught up. OK? Thank you for your patience!

This week, Nov 7–11, I’ll be working on TAKE ME TO THE WATER preorders that came in between Oct 10–15 and I PREFER THE FORESTS preorders that came in between Oct 3–10.

It’s a bit hard to explain, but well before we “go live” with preorders, we actually already have a backlog. Our subscribers mostly signed on in the spring, for instance, and our authors also sometimes need the first batch for a launch event, etc. So even if you smashed that button on the first day, so sorry, you are not actually first. 😂

I’ve sent out…let’s see…about 150 copies of these two, all told. And yours is coming, I promise.

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Our 2022–2023 Handmade Chapbook Series

Bloof Books is thrilled to announce our new series of chapbooks for 2022–2023:

Ryan Gosling Wearing a T-shirt of Macaulay Culkin
Wearing a T-shirt of Ryan Gosling
Wearing a T-shirt of Macaulay Culkin
Marisa Crawford & Morgan Parker

Romance in Twelve Lines
Bruna Beber, translated by Sarah Rebecca Kersley

If Your Lungs Are Skied Make the Scar Song Echo
Until All the Winged Things Bleed Your Poetry
Steven Karl

dear Elsie / seltzer
Nicole Steinberg

Take Me to the Water
Irene Vázquez

dwellswarm
Reagan Wilson

Additionally we will be publishing a chapbook we held over from 2020 (aka the Uncertainty Year), by a poet already part of the Bloof collective:

three tides
Pattie McCarthy

ABOUT THE POETS

Bruna Beber (Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, 1984) is a Brazilian poet and translator. She is the author of five books of poetry, including a fila sem fim dos demônios descontentes (the endless line of unsatisfied demons, 2006); balés (ballets, 2009), and the critically acclaimed Rua da padaria (Bakery street, 2013) and Ladainha (Litany, 2017). She is also the author of a children’s book, Zebrosinha, illustrated by Beta Maya (2013). Her translations into Portuguese include books by Eileen Myles, Sylvia Plath, Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare (a new Brazilian translation of Hamlet, published in 2019), Louise Glück, Mary Gaitskill, and others. Her work has been translated into various languages and has appeared in journals and anthologies in Germany, Argentina, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. She is based in the city of São Paulo and has recently completed a Master’s degree in literary history and theory from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Website: www.brunabeber.com.br / Instagram profile: @brunabeber_ (Photo credit: Rafael Roncato)

Marisa Crawford is the author of the poetry collections Reversible and The Haunted House from Switchback Books. She is co-editor, with Megan Milks, of We Are th Baby-Sitters Club: Essays & Artwork from Grown-Up Readers (Chicago Review Press, 2021), and founder of Weird Sister. Her writing has appeared in the Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, BUST, VICE, Hyperallergic, Bitch, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. marisacrawford.net. (Photo credit: Lauren Desberg)

Steven Karl is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently, Sister (Noemi Press, 2016). He is the editor-in-chief for Sink Review, an online journal dedicated to experimental contemporary poetry. Recent poems have appeared in the tiny, jubilat and the Tokyo Poetry Journal, and a collaborative Dos-à-dos art book with Joseph Lappie will be forthcoming in 2022. Born in Philadelphia, he currently lives in Tokyo with his wife and daughter. stevenkarl.wordpress.com.

Sarah Rebecca Kersley is a translator, poet and editor, originally from the UK and based in Brazil for over a decade. Her work has appeared in places such as The Elevation Review, Asymptote Journal, Denver Quarterly, Isele Magazine, and elsewhere. She co-runs Livraria Boto-cor-de-rosa, a bookshop and small press focused on contemporary literature, in the city of Salvador, Bahia, where she is based. Instagram profile: @sarahrebeccakersley. (Photo credit: Ana Reis).

Pattie McCarthy is the author of seven books of poetry and over a dozen chapbooks. She teaches literature and creative writing at Temple University where she is a non-tenure track associate professor.

Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker’s debut book of nonfiction is forthcoming from One World. morgan-parker.com (Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017) and Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), as well as various chapbooks, most recently Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). She is the editorof a literary anthology, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011), and her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York TimesNewsweekFlavorwireBitch, and Hyperallergic. She is the 2021–2022 Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and she can be found online at nicolesteinberg.net or @nicolebrett.

Irene Vázquez is a Black Mexican American poet, journalist, and editor. Irene graduated from Yale with a BA in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and English, as part of the 2021 cohort of Mellon Mays-Bouchet Fellows. Recently, Irene was named a winter/spring 2022 Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Irene’s works have appeared or are forthcoming in Muzzle, the Oxford American, and the lickety-split, among others. Mostly Irene likes drinking coffee, impulse-buying books, and reminding people that the South has something to say. Irene’s work can be found at www.irenevazquez.com. (Photo credit: Gerardo Monarca Velasquez)

Reagan Louise Wilson is a writer & artist who lives in Los Angeles. Some of her work can be found in the Portland Review, Matter Monthly, CONE, and Simultaneous Times, as well as several long lost zines. She is currently at work on a strawberry garden and a novel about care work in catastrophic times. The kiddo she looks after wondered if “& blah blah blah…” could really be included in this official bio.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

These chapbooks will be released individually (on a schedule to be determined, starting this summer) for $10 each + $3 shipping, featuring hand-printed linocut covers and hand-sewn in natural twine. Or subscribe now to collect the whole series, and save $10.

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Smol Fair / AWP 2022

Join us Saturday, March 19 at 4:00 p.m. EDT as we gather to read poems in celebration of Smol Fair!

Readers (L to R, from top in photo above): Dakotah Jennifer, Becca Klaver, Ginger Ko, Sharon Mesmer, Danielle Pafunda, JJ Rowan, Katie Jean Shinkle, Maureen Thorson & Elisabeth Workman. Hosted by Shanna Compton.

Register for the free reading via Zoom here.

And now through March 27, we’re also running a Virtual Bookfair special (like we have every year during these conferences!): Enter SMOLFAIR at checkout to receive 20% off all Bloof books and chapbooks, including the already discounted chapbook bundle. (Excludes Hi Water art prints/cards and used books.)

Check out the amazing indie press smorgasbord that is Smol Fair here. There are dozens of presses doing virtual bookfair tables and days and days of free events!

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Bloof Books at SMOL Fair, March 3–7

This week we’re excited to be taking part in the alternative small-press book festival, SMOL Fair! Dozens of your favorite little presses are participating, most offering discounted book fair specials on their sites, and many hosting virtual readings and other events.

About SMOL Fair:SMOL Fair is an alternative, virtual book fair that will be ‘live’ from March 3-7, 2021. It is 100% free for presses to participate.  For readers, we are hosting a reading, a keynote address, and a mixer.  We are coordinating an events calendar for that week featuring readings from participating presses as well as book give-aways and deals on work from your favorite authors.”

Hello from the ink slab. We carve, ink, and print our linocut chapbook covers by hand.

20% off at bloofbooks.com

NOW through Sunday, March 1–7, use the promo code SMOLFAIR at checkout to receive 20% off your order. We’ll be enclosing hand-printed postcards, bookmarks, and other surprises with your packages (while supplies last).

Bloof Books + Action Books Marathon Reading for SMOL Fair

On Saturday, March 6 beginning at 4:00 pm EST, a multitude of poets will perform via Zoom. Details are still being finalized, but the lineup is looking stellar. The event will be auto-captioned and include some visual materials by the performers, plus a multimedia intermission. Free registration via Eventbrite here.

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RAT QUEEN by Katie Jean Shinkle is now available in our handmade chapbook series

RAT QUEEN
Katie Jean Shinkle

$10.00

Dec 2019
6 x 9 |  24 pages

Handprinted linocut cover
Gold metallic Cranfield Traditional Relief Ink on cream 80 lb cover
Digitally printed interior on cream opaque 70 lb text
Hand sewn in natural twine

Note: Individually printed by hand in small batches, no two covers will be exactly alike. Expect minor variations across the edition.

Limited to 150 numbered copies

BLOOF BOOKS CHAPBOOK SERIES
Volume 4: Issue 4 (2019)
ISSN 2373-163X

The eighteen poems in Rat Queen luxuriantly explore transgression and intimacy, the various ways we take each other eagerly apart and taxidermy ourselves back together again. “My dear, what muscularly defines you?” the speaker asks, “When I pin you like insect wings, / corked-fog and iridescent-under.”

Rat Queen is the fourth chapbook in the 2019–2020 series from Bloof Books. Each chapbook in the series is released in a limited edition of at least one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release, and eventually in a combination volume called Bound. 

This is Katie Jean Shinkle’s fifth chapbook. She is an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing at Sam Houston State University. She is the author of three full-length works, most recently Ruination (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). Her poetry, prose, and criticisms can be found in Flaunt Magazine, the Georgia ReviewDenver QuarterlyNew South, the Collagist, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She serves as associate fiction editor of ANMLY, co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM.

42 in stock

SKU: RAT Categories: , Tag:

Description

Excerpt RAT QUEEN Let me cry 1,000,000 tears of gold, weave tapestry-strands with vigor, douse your open heart with champagne, only the best, most expensive will do. Show me Benjamin Franklin, fanned out to cool, I will show people you forget along the way. Tell me, while at my feet, how the bank of booze is vampiric and fanged. The equation of who will perish first, (w)hol(l)y simplistic: You, knee-crouched, or me, hands in prayer, eyes transfixed? So funny what we cling to, not giggles or open-mouth hardy, but uncanny, filled to the brim.

Additional information

Author

Shinkle, Katie Jean

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Shanna Compton’s 2018 recommended reading

We’ve asked our authors to submit highlights from their reading this year— anything outstanding they read during the year and want to share, whether published this year or not. As a countermeasure/contrast to the typical year-end Best Of lists compiled by various mainstream media outlets (which are often linked to ad buys, or shared parent companies, o did you not know that!?), expect these personal lists to point in less expected directions. We’ll be posting our poets’ picks as they come in over the next week or two. Enjoy. —Bloof

Shanna Compton is the author of Creature Sounds Fade (Black Lawrence, forthcoming in 2020), Brink (Bloof, 2013), For Girls & Other Poems (Bloof, 2008), Down Spooky (Open Book Award Winner, Winnow, 2005), and several chapbooks. She’s currently working on The Hazard Cycle, a book-length speculative poem. Her poetry and essays are widely published, appearing in Best American Poetry, the NationAmerican Poetry ReviewMcSweeney’s, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She works as a freelance book designer and editor in Lambertville, NJ.


Because I work as an editor (here & for independent authors) and book designer (here & for other small presses), a great deal of the reading I do each year is pre-publication. In other words, I’m reading the future. As a result, I’m also often reading the past, catching up on things from previous years I didn’t have a chance to read right when they were first released. And like all of us, as a writer I’m often organizing my reading around/toward whatever project I’m personally working on. Here are some things I read this year from each of those categories.

New Poetry from China: 1917–2017
Ming Di, editor
(Black Square Editions)

This is an excellent example of my future-reading dilemma. I’ve been reading & learning about Chinese poetry’s history and various movements from this anthology edited by Ming Di (which I designed for Black Square) since I first got the manuscript in 2017. But it’s not yet available for preorders. Just trust me: write it down now as something to look forward to and teach from, and a month or so into 2019 check the website again here.

Drafts, Fragments & Poems: The Complete Poetry
Joan Murray, edited by Farnoosh Fathi
(NYRB Poets)

Drafts, Fragments & Poems: The Complete Poetry by Joan Murray, edited by Farnoosh Fathi

I have dreamed of this book existing for many years. Farnoosh Fathi’s tremendous work restores one of our lost poets to us. Hooray.

The hour like a child runs down the angle of star and rests at the bottom
It is a staring woman that may hold that child in its arms
But women prefer to see the hours slip from their fingers
For that are dancing an old earth constituency

I am a little beyond the river and stare from my particular casement
I am slender as the stalk and have my own flowering
I don’t draw from women but I prefer the truth and not the trick of living

Witch Wife
Kiki Petrosino
(Sarabande)

Witch Wife by Kiki Petrosino

 I must forgive myself for waiting so long.
I know a woman who waits is offensive 
but I just can’t get over my flaws

& now they might zero me out. My blood
is a zone of dispute, a tropic of fault. Since
I’ve waited so long, I must forgive myself.

The Taiga Syndrome
Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine & Aviva Kana
(Dorothy Project)

I’ve never met a Dorothy Project book I haven’t loved. This is book is both thoroughly odd & unexpectedly gripping. It shouldn’t work, but it does. A sort of speculative detective verse-prose novella.

I remember the light through the many windows. Memory dangles these windows in front of me, at daybreak, just barely covered by a thin linen curtain. Then the same windows in the middle of the day, opened wide. The windows again in the evening, and above all, I remember the hands on them, all over the glass. And the nostalgia of this, of what’s on the other side the great beyond, as it used to be called. Above all, I remember I used to exhale in front of them, in front of the glass, and write with the tip of my index finger the words “I am leaving here” and “I will never return.” 

It’s No Good Everything’s Bad
Stephanie Young
(DoubleCross Press)

It's No Good Everything's Bad by Stephanie Young

sometimes I think what can I possibly say about anxiety and having a body
that my friends haven’t already

other times I wonder why there aren’t more books on this subject
100 books about feminist bookstores
500 about feminist health collectives

there is a lot to be said about ovarian cysts

Certain Magical Acts 
Alice Notley
(Penguin Random House)

Certain Magical Acts by Alice Notley

I’ve been rereading Alice Notley—because of the book I’m working on, she’s a poet on perpetual repeat (not that we sound alike, but she sustains and bristles weird energies over a long-form poem like no one else). So I could have chosen The Descent of Alette again, or Benediction, or Alma, but I’m going with this one because I finally got to see her read this year, last month in Princeton. She read the first poem from this book, “I Couldn’t Sleep in My Dream,” then several from a newer unpublished series she’s been working on to recover some lost memories (so lots of anecdotes & recognizable poet figures), and a few other things. She talked a bit about her process for her book-length work—having an idea, finding a form to contain it, and how she “doesn’t write collections. Well, this [holds up this book] is a collection.”

The sun is rising, and light enters my old 
house. What sun is this? The desert star 
or some one flame as in transcendence? I 
won’t as it. I won’t ask anyone anything.
I got tired of being childish. In your assigned 
role you were a woman. But I’ve always been 
a poet, that’s all, no sex or race, no age or 
face. Can Eternity strip me of it? That’s only 
another word. I’m inside myself, and inside it.
Today’s the new fact. Are there others there?

“When I die, I hope they talk about me” 
Camille Dungy
(The Rumpus)

…I have to dig deep
below the fold to find stories about how
he turned his back on boys who were quilting
America’s cities in gay enclaves. Many Black women
died of the same neglect and, Good Lord, I remember
the news used to talk about babies, blood
saturated in suffering. Not today, though.
Today, the papers can’t even speak of his war
without casting that failure, also, as a bid for peace.
So, please, when I die, forget all the fires
I set.

Staying Alive
Laura Sims
(Ugly Duckling)

Staying Alive by Laura Sims

When the culture passed over
We bathed         in its light        in its fear          in its
Mountain stream. We left mountains
Of carts full of junk behind. We bade them
Farewell. They bade us
Weep and know shape
They bade us be hard.
Without power, I wielded my body 

Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene
Linda Russo & Marthe Reed, editors
(Wesleyan University Press)

Counter-Desecration anthology edited by Linda Russo & Marthe Reed

Disclaimer: I’m in this too, but it’s still brilliant. Including terms such as viral avatar (Danielle Pafunda), ecobereavement (Bhanu Kapil), negative corpuscuity (Vishnu Aggarwal), cloudygenous (Eileen Tabios), this unique work of speculative nature writing/ecopoetics opens several new portals. 

Third-Millennium Heart
Ursula Andkjær Olsen
Translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen
(Action Books/Broken Dimanche Press)

I am allowed to be upset here.
I have to be upset here.
I cannot get out of here until I’ve been upset.

Spells for Black Wizards
Candace Williams
(TAR Chapbook Series/Altas Review)

Photo of the dark blue cover folder next to the oversized unfolded chapbook Spells for Black Wizards by Candace Williams, showing part of the text for a poem called "On Neoliberalism Or: Why My Black Ass Is Tired."

This ingenious & gorgeous fold-out chapbook is alas sold out. But look at it! I hope the photo is good enough here for you to read, but you can also find some of the poems on Candace’s website.

Day Bed
Zach Savich
(Black Ocean)

Day Bed by Zach Savich

Civilization forgets its raincoat in the cab

I hoped to be older when driven to Proust
The melody being whatever you repeat

Beautiful warbled hopscotch grid
So you see a person in a car for sale in a field

The past wasn’t simpler but memory is
My neighborhood has its own stained glass shop

I offer the business I can

Indictus
Natalie Eilbert
(Noemi Press)

Indictus by Natalie Eilbert

I didn’t mean to assemble my whole career on lies, so now I blast holes
in the men. I blast holes in the prints of the men. I blast holes in the holes 
who are the men. I move them in a process called autonomous fetishization, 
and they enjoy the hazards of my queenly thinking. I grip their cheeks 

and make them fish-mouth kind words to me.

“goodwifthing [mercy learn in a permanent lockdown]”
Pattie McCarthy
(The Tiny)

goodwifthing by Pattie McCarthy at the Tiny

mercy learn in a permanent lockdown
you should work in a permanent lockdown
you could play fuck walk in a permanent
lockdown birth sleep eat in a permanent
lockdown wake tweet fight swim shift thou pluckest
me out in a permanent lockdown

“Aging”
Rosmarie Waldrop
(Academy of American Poets / Poem-a-Day)

Aging by Rosemarie Waldrop at Poets.org

I don’t know Rosmarie Waldrop personally, but she’s an important model for me as a poet/publisher so I always feel very close to her work. I love this poem.

The road toward rotting has been so long. We forget where we are going. Like a child, I look amazed at a thistle. Or drink cheap wine and hug my knees. To shorten the shadow? To ward off letting go?

Beast Meridian
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
(Noemi Press)

Visually, aurally, and typographically complex—including photographs, text collages, mixed languages. Both mournful and hopeful, this wide-format book is a luxuriant physical experience. I don’t think representing it with a snippet online is enough. Sit with it in your lap.

Photo of the interior of Beast Meridian by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal showing a poem on page 33 beginning "1995 budding black swallow each received blue eye that watches your house"

The End of Something
Kate Greenstreet
(Ahsahta Press)

The End of Something by Kate Greenstreet

Kate’s work often mixes elements of visual art, samples of her handwriting, photographs, and multiple shifting viewpoints that create kaleidoscopic patterns. There’s nothing quite like living for a while inside one of her books.

15. Introvert

Deep in my own green element, 
I met a friend.
My double, my dearest.

Others
pulled me out of the sea,
placed me

in this pan of water,
added salt
and taught me to eat bread.