Venus in Bloom

Deglane’s Venus in Bloom is a micro collection of poems about women, their bodies, the way dreams haunt and change, and the power and vulnerability in growing up. It’s about perception, worth, and reclaiming, fighting through judgment offered up by other bodies, where “oceans boil themselves into silence.” This is a reclaiming of agency, an “I can’t be your yes girl, no, not anyone’s” girl, a person learning to be fierce, cutting off thorns, numbing, but also “shopping for a bigger body to house all this grief.” This girl is a vulnerable girl learning her strengths, numbness, mistakes, wishes, dreaming of flight. A girl with more, a complicated person coming into being, with more to learn, to give, to say no to.

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Cover art by Sharmon Davidson