Forthcoming March 4, 2025
Scorched Earth is a survey of what is on the other side of survival. The title comes the ekphrastic poem I wrote after the same name, inspired by Kara Walker’s piece Buzzard's Roost Pass, 2005 from Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War. I was ecstatic that Walker gave us permission to use this incredible piece for the cover of my book, which started coalescing after the 2016 presidential election when I felt invisible and small inside the catastrophic political landscape. Now, almost eight years later, the maddening ouroboros returns with similar anxieties for this upcoming fall. Except in this seemingly never-ending cycle, I wrote and finished my second full-length collection as a way to feel possible against all the impossibility. Published by Washington Square Press, an imprint of Atria/Simon & Schuster.
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Winner for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. Click on the book to order.
Cover Art: Terrance Hayes
Winner of the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver. Click on the book to order.
Cover art: Amy Sherald