Portrait of a Person Who Pushes Love Away in Fear of Losing It

PORTRAIT OF A PERSON WHO PUSHES LOVE AWAY IN FEAR OF LOSING IT is a lyric, brutally honest, darkly funny portrait of a woman raised on violence, God, and American television, who spends her adult life trying to understand why she keeps mistaking hurt for love and keeps coming back anyway.

The collection begins in a childhood of Judge Judy reruns and evangelical youth groups, where the speaker learns that love is both salvation and weapon. From there, the poems plunge into the mess of her twe...