Her poetry probes the difficulties that the individual encounters in relationships with others, with the natural world, and with cultural and popular ideas. - -britanica

    Luke loves her with all his heart, but the only thing standing in the way of their happiness is the fact that he could be April’s baby daddy. Scarlett feels hurt and finds herself drawn in an unlikely relationship with Troy as he sets out to win her heart. However, unbeknownst to him, she’s not exactly keeping things completely honest. Nina wants nothing more than to get back with her kid’s father, Stephen. However, Stephen has moved on with an old friend of Nina’s and this union threatens any type of chance that she and Stephen have at being together. Rick continues to lurk in the shadows, definitely making it hard for Nina to ever find happiness with anyone other than himself. Sheila struggles with loving Jay as Jay struggles with losing Scarlett. To add to the confusion, Jay refuses to come to terms with the possibility of being April’s other baby daddy to her unborn child. Sheila is still on a road to redemption, but finds herself questioning Scarlett’s loyalty to her as veiled secrets are slowly being revealed. Will she find out the truth about Scarlett and her father messing around or will the tables turn and reveal some nasty details about herself? There are always two sides to every story. However, in this series, there are numerous sides to a story that only one can imagine… SCARLETT3

    The misunderstandings caused by language recur throughout the book: contemplating what "yes" means in different cultures; watching Nickelodeon's "Nick at Nite" with a husband who grew up in the Philippines and never saw The Patty Duke Show; misreading another poet's title "The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke" as "The Difference Between Pepsi and Pope" and concluding that "Pepsi is all for premarital sex. / The Pope won't stain your teeth." Misunderstandings also abound as characters mingle with others from different classes. In "Cockroaches," a father-in-law refers to budget-minded American college students backpacking in Europe as cockroaches, not realizing his daughter-in-law was once, not so long ago, such a student/roach herself.With welcome levity and refreshing irreverence, The Star-Spangled Banner addresses issues of ethnicity, class, and gender in America.

    Beginning with a painting done in 2003, the poems move backwards in time to 1 BC, where an architectural fragment is painted on an architectural fragment, highlighting visual art’s strange relationship between the image and the thing itself. The total effect is exhilarating—a wholly original, personal take on art history coupled with Bang’s sly and elegant commentary on poetry’s enduring subjects: Love, Death, Time and Desire. The recipient of numerous prizes and awards, Bang stands at the front of American poetry with this new work, asking more of the English language, and enticing and challenging the reader.

    Edited by Lee Ann Brown. SONNETS, first published in 1989 as Tender Buttons Number 1 is widely considered to be one of the most generative and innovative works of contemporary American poetry, radically rethinking the traditional sonnet form. This expanded 25th Anniversary edition includes a new preface by Bernadette Mayer, an editor's note by Tender Buttons Press publisher Lee Ann Brown, and a selection of previously unpublished archival material including the Skinny Sonnets, described as Hypnogogic Word Playing in Reporters' Notebooks which further expand our map of Bernadette Mayer's ground- breaking works of writing consciousness.

    Political and iconoclastic, Anne Boyer’s poems dally in pastoral camp and a dizzying, delightful array of sights and sounds born from the dust of the Kansas plains where dinner for two is cooked in Fire King and served on depression ware, and where bawdy instructions for a modern “Home on the Range” read:Mix a drink of stock lot:vermouth and the water table.And the bar will smell of IBP.And you will lick my Laura Ingalls.In Boyer’s heartland, “Surfaces should be worn. Lamps should smolder. / Dahlias do bloom like tumors. The birds do rise like bombs.” And the once bright and now crumbling populism of Marxists, poets, and folksingers springs vividly back to life as realism, idealism, and nostalgia do battle amongst the silos and ditchweed.Nothing, too, is a subject:dusk regulating the blankery.Fill in the nightish sky with ardent,fill in the metaphorical smell.A poet and visual artist, Anne Boyer lives in Kansas, where she co-edits the poetry journal Abraham Lincoln and teaches at Kansas City Art Institute.

    She loved Je’Marcus Watford past his flaws and stayed loyal, even when he failed to put her first. She dove head first into their young love, allowing Je’Marcus to be her lifeline when her mother abandoned her to chase the street life, but when the smoke clears and those blinders come off, Aniqa finds herself living a heart-breaking nightmare. Hoping to give her baby girl, Essence, the world, Aniqa is faced with a tough decision: move on from Je’Marcus’ abusive love drought, or stay blindly committed to a disloyal dude. There’s just one problem, though: the only way Je’Marcus plans to let her go is through death. Linc Carmichael is a low key boss that wants no parts of the L word. Determined to take the family business to the next level, he plays it close to the chest when dealing with chicks. He sticks to chicks that don’t expect a commitment and has one main rule: no chicks with kids. That all goes out the window when he meets Aniqa; her natural beauty and heart of gold bring Linc to his knees, and he knows he has to have her—no matter who has to die in the process. Crushed is what you feel when love don’t love you back, but Linc just might be the one to renew Aniqa’s faith in love when she finds herself Crushin’ on a Boss....

     Four months. That’s it. Smile. Dote. Look pretty for the cameras. Be his beck and call girl, his faux girlfriend. Four months, then I walk away two hundred fifty thousand dollars richer, never setting eyes on Shaw Mercer again. No emotions, no strings, and definitely no falling in love with the client. Yet, Seattle’s infamous playboy proves to not only be irresistible, he may be the man I never thought I wanted. What began as a ruse, a strategically planned campaign move suddenly morphs into reality, and I find myself breaking my own rules of self-preservation one by one. But the world has a cruel way of slapping me across the face as she always does. Just when I think Shaw and I might have our happily ever after, my ex-fiancé re-enters the picture and flips our lives upside down with devastating secrets neither of us see coming, but more importantly, neither of us will be able to escape. I can only stand by and watch helplessly as the future I’d allowed myself to dream of comes crashing down around me once again. *** Contains adult subject matter. +18 only

    A boy. A heir. To carry the family name and the company forward into the future. Instead I got you! Two daughters. Fit for nothing except to marry someone and walk away.”Kajal Rathore had walked out of her home and her father after that confrontation, making a life and living it on her own terms. Away from the archaic chauvinism that made her father reject her because she was not the son he wanted. Now her father’s flailing health has brought her back to her home. And to the company that had been in her family for generations. Once Kajal had had a dream of becoming a part of that company and now fates were handing over that dream. But to claim it, she will have to confront the father who denies her, the mother who never stood up for her, the sister who needs her and the man who wants her. “I want you to marry Kajal. I don’t..I can’t trust her with Rathore Industries. But I don’t have a choice. But if you are beside her, I would never have to worry. Marry her and the company would be yours.”Arjun Shekhawat was deeply indebted to his boss. The man who had been his godfather and his mentor. Refusing him was not on cards. Even when it was something as personal as marriage. After all, it was a win-win situation. But keeping the promise meant getting close to his boss’s daughter. Close enough to win her trust, to appreciate the person that she was and the secrets that surrounded her. Close enough to fall in love with her. And to realize that he had unwittingly agreed to become the weapon that would one day be used against her.

    With her mother on drugs, she has to work the block to keep food on the table for her sibling and herself. Now at 18 years old, she is ready to leave the street life behind and focus on college. It has always been her dream to get out of the slums of Mississippi and move on to a better life. All of that changes when the infamous Romario Jones sets his sights on her. Standing at 6'3, smooth light brown skin, mesmerizing light brown eyes, and a fly swag to match, Romario Jones has always been the ladies dream catch. Things only gets better when their former mentor, Hypno, steps down and hands Romario and his friend Jace, his drug empire. Thing quickly unravel as jealousy, love, and tragedy strikes. Jace won't stop at nothing until he gets back what Romario has stolen from him. Can Eniyah survive the grimy streets of the Sip while also steering clear of her growing feelings for Romario, or will she stay in the game that she is fighting to get out of?

    She's the owner of a booming private school in Miami, her relationship with her man Mitchell is promising and life couldn't be any better. Or so she thought. A chance encounter with one of her students' father turned her world upside down. She never expected to fall for the King of the streets.Single father, Kayne Grant is feared by many and wears his title as Florida's Connect proudly. He rules the state with an iron fist like any Jamaican Rude Bwoy would. Nothing moves period, without his approval. He has a lot of money, power and respect. He also has his fair share of women. But when he meets the beautiful, complicated and feisty Danity, who also happens to be the owner of his daughters’ private school, she gives him a run for his money.Follow Danity and Kayne on their roller coaster ride of a relationship. What happens when a good girl falls for a Rude Bwoy? Will she be able to tame the beast in him? Or will his many women and ties to the streets tear apart their perfect fairytale?

    By turns seductive and self-deprecating, Women in Public navigates a world where the erotics of the body and mind do battle against the constructs that would demean and define them, using lyric, fragment, humor, and repetition to create a space flexible enough to hold the many contradictions of reality. Where expectations and desires can be piled too easily upon the body, Kahn digs in her heels, writing in attempt to liberate physical form from society's confines.Praise for Women in Public:"'Do you think that you are greater than a mom?' This is an intensely honest, honestly intense poetry. Humorous, carnal, accusatory, celebratory––Women in Public tells me to get lost so I do. When I find myself later, I'm re-reading Women in Public."––Rod Smith"In these exhilarating poems, Elaine Kahn shoots from the groin, championing a ferociousness that rages against asperity while playfully seducing the reader to misbehave. Hers is a realm where oceans beat against genitals, and Hannah Wilke warms the earth. I don’t want to let go of Women in Public for I want its boldness all to myself."––Dodie BellamyAbout the Author:Musician, poet, artist, Elaine Kahn was born in Evanston, Illinois and is currently based in Oakland, California. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a BA from California College of the Arts. Kahn is the author of three poetry chapbooks, A Voluptuous Dream During an Eclipse (2012), Customer (2010), and Radiant Bottle Caps (2008), and is a contributor to Art Papers. Her music project, Horsebladder, has toured widely throughout the U.S. and Canada. She is also co-founder of the feminist puppet troop P. Splash Collective and managing editor of the small press Flowers & Cream.

    Her voice came back, whispering at first, then screaming. Ceremony for the Choking Ghost contains the sound of that voice returning, bringing poems about grief and its effect on the body, the body politic, memory and, of course, poems about love. From the intensely personal, "How My Family Grieved," to the political, "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn't a Pillar of Salt)," Finneyfrock engages the reader with the chiseled images of a precise storyteller.

    Rogue & Kat Savage.

    In the fall of 2012, she went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread that wouldn't abate for months. So she began @sosadtoday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings, and which quickly gained a dedicated following. In So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into the existential themes she explores on Twitter, grappling with sex, death, love, low self-esteem, addiction, and the drama of waiting for the universe to text you back. With insights as sharp as her humor, Broder explores—in prose that is both gutsy and beautiful, aggressively colloquial and achingly poetic—questions most of us are afraid to even acknowledge, let alone answer, in order to discover what it really means to be a person in this modern world.