BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Reading is kind of my jam. It was the thing I did ever since I could remember, especially when I was feeling sad and lonely and needed to feel like the world was an OK place to be. These four collections have done just that for me, and for that, I'm ever grateful to the poets who wrote them and birthed them into the world.
Check them out below:
1. Angeltits - Katie Longofono (Sundress Publications, 2016)
Excerpt below:
And it's a free download! Free books, people.
2. There Should Be Flowers - Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (CCM, 2016)
You can read poems by Espinoza here over at PEN. And this excerpt below:
3. OOOO - Erin Taylor (Bottlecap Press, 2016)
Excerpt over at Reality Beach:
"I am only real in these times and
spaces
never long never
much but so much all the same,
bright colors flashing smiling faces
and beating breathing
I wish that I could return
I wish that I had never left,
a child suckling at a mother’s breast
it all exists inside my"
4. Sad Girl Poems - Christopher Soto (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016)
Excerpt from "Myself When I'm Real" and check out this interview at VIDA:
"Say my body // isn’t a sequin dress—
Isn’t a raw fish, being stripped of scales.
Say I’m not // a drunken disco ball
In a lonely skating rink.
Or the deep wishing-well // the starfish fell
Into."
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets.