Dead Dog Poems is a collection about pet love and pet loss. It is the small joys each pet parent goes through, from naptime, to walks around the block, to the horrific moment of being at the emergency vet and hearing that your beloved companion may have cancer. This collection brings you front and center for a terminal diagnosis, and the aftermath of such a substantial loss. If you have ever loved a pet, this collection is for you. The poem, Baxter, was awarded the Editor's Choice Award from Frost Meadow Review, and was nominated for a 2019 Best of the Net, while Road Maps was nominated for Best of the Net, and Blood Pleas and Library Books was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association (PNWA) Poetry Contest.

Dead Dogs Don’t Bark is the second poetry collection from the acclaimed author Tolu’ A. Akinyemi. With a similar tone and style to Dead Lions Don’t Roar (Tolu’s first poetry collection), this follow-up masterpiece is nothing short of pure motivation. The poems cover a range of topics that many in life are aware of, that the author himself has experienced, and that we all, whatever our age, need support in. Beautifully written, the poems speak volumes to all age groups as they encourage finding your inner talent and celebrating your individuality and distinct voice. The poetry collection contains didactic elements for negating the effects of peer pressure and criminality, along with many other forces. Also covering mental health, relationships, career focus, and general life issues, the poetry is, in turn, bittersweet, amusing and thought-provoking.

This book was written to share a personal collection with those going through dark times; those close to them that want to understand better what that struggle is like and those who share an interest in the issues that potentially affect us all. These poems represent those who are different; those who are sensitive, imaginative and compassionate; inclined towards tears (though not publicly); so patient that they can survive in even the most unbearable of circumstances; those who are poetic, mystic, fatalistic, introspective and mistrusting of rational thought - choosing instead to trust intuition; who are able to feel a wide array of human emotions (from absolute joy to despair); who are submissive and, yet, stubborn and who enjoy a penchant for walking the dark. Why the name, "The Black Dog?" Winston Churchill coined the term to reflect the situation of those suffering dark times. It is a term associated with being different and with depression; things that I and so many have felt. Also, dogs have a reputation as being man's best friend. To that end, I wish this book can be a best friend to someone; to let them know they are not alone and to let them know there is hope.

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR POETRY Danez Smith is our president Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.

A Latina feminist chronicle of the Vietnam War era in documentary poems that highlight the voices of women relegated to the margins of history.

Belly to the Brutal sings a corrido of the love between mothers and daughters, confronting the learned complicity with patriarchal violence passed down from generation to generation. This poetry edges into the borderlands, touching the realm of chora—humming, screaming, rhythm—transporting the words outside of patriarchal and racist constructs. Drawing from curanderisma and a revived wave of feminist brujería, Jennifer Givhan creates a healing space for Brown women and mothers. Each poem finds its own form, interweaving beauty and devastation to create a pathway out of the systems that have for too long oppressed women. The poems dwell in the thick language of "motherfear," "where love grows too / in the shining center of the wound." This poetry of invocation moves toward a transformation of violence that is ultimately redemptive. Today I Learned the Word Mondegreen Which means to misinterpret from mishearing the lyrics in a way that gives new meaning as I have long misheard the homophony of my heart. I take it to mean the first flush of life after winter, that deep need to keep growing after all your once-bright blossoms have seeded or wilted away. Have you ever needed to lie flat as if dead against the rockmarked earth & listen to the voices licking against the sky your past shuffling through the leaves like a remix till you finally realize what your life has meant— & it aches? When the truth comes, let it come like jewelweed wilding beside the poison ivy. The antidote within our reach.

“A bold and passionate new collection... Intimacy is rarely conveyed as gracefully as in Bass’s lustrous poems.” —Booklist Indigo, the newest collection by Ellen Bass, merges elegy and praise poem in an exploration of life’s complexities. Whether her subject is oysters, high heels, a pork chop, a beloved dog, or a wife’s return to health, Bass pulls us in with exquisite immediacy. Her lush and precisely observed descriptions allow us to feel the sheer primal pleasure of being alive in our own “succulent skin,” the pleasure of the gifts of hunger, desire, touch. In this book, joy meets regret, devotion meets dependence, and most importantly, the poet so in love with life and living begins to look for the point where the price of aging overwhelms the rewards of staying alive. Bass is relentless in her advocacy for the little pleasures all around her. Her gaze is both expansive and hyperfocused, celebrating (and eulogizing) each gift as it is given and taken, while also taking stock of the larger arc. She draws the lines between generations, both remembering her parents’ lives and deaths and watching her own children grow into the space that she will leave behind. Indigo shows us the beauty of this cycle, while also documenting the deeply human urge to resist change and hang on to the life we have, even as it attempts to slip away.