Jessica Cohn
Gratitude Diary: Poems
Main Street Rag, 2024
$15
Playlist:
Jessica Cohn will tell you she landed on the title of her first collection because Gratitude Diary seems generic enough to be disarming. Cohn has long written nonfiction but finds poetry can say more about some of the harder facts we’re facing in post-truth times. In her poetry, nature serves as a lens on a political thematic. In this book, the speaker marks a way forward with rocks, feathers, and dark spots. These three offerings explore sub-themes of family and survival.
Poems read:
“The Birds”
“Transplants”
“How to Read the Summer Sky”
Hilary king
Stitched on Me
Riot in Your Throat Press, 2024
$17.00
Playlist:
My book, Stitched on Me, is about growing up as a woman in the South, wearing expectations and learning to discard those expectations. It's about women coming into their own, in power and comfort. These poems are about mothers, daughters, Jennifer Lopez, Ginger Spice, and what to ask for at Christmas.
Poems read:
“Stitched on Me"
“If My 1970s Childhood Had an Instagram Feed"
“Edgestitch"
former DMQ Review contributor
Current editor, DMQ Review
Nancy L. Meyer
The Stoop and The Steeple
Frog on the Moon, 2024
$15.00
Playlist:
In The Stoop and the Steeple Nancy L. Meyer introduces us to Mel, a Jamaican artist she met on a New York stoop, and Zebulon, a man her ancestors enslaved in Massachusetts, a man who climbed a steeple and crowed!
Poems read:
“Zebulon on the Steeple”: the shock of this information drove the book.
“Medicine Box”: the speaker responds to diary excerpts of her 8th great grandmother, the enslaver. This poem explores the kinds of power we exert over another.
“Recant": using the lens of race, class, and culture, the author revisits her interracial/intercultural marriage which ended in divorce 45 years ago.