• What’s your favorite thing you have written?

All my pieces, collections, and books are like my children; they each fill a special space—I favor not one more than the other. How could a parent pick their favorite child? My first book, The Sunshine Special, will always be my first. The book tells the story of my great uncle, like a grandfather to me, traveling by train in 1920 from Fort Worth, Texas, to Los Angeles, California and back. He meets his future wife along the way, a love they have held for over 50 years. It is written in the style of a journal interrupted by letters and telegrams. The Sunshine Special is my favorite because it allowed me to tell his story. Shoebox, my second collection tells a poetic story of a woman, who was adopted from Russia as an infant and who now struggles with depression and dysplasia. This is my favorite book because it tells her story. My third collection, 30 Days of 19, was written during the first 30 days of the covid quarantine. I inverted the haiku from 17 syllables to 19. Each poem represents a daily snapshot of my world. Each poem is juxtaposed with a tweet about the pandemic and the total case and death numbers. This book is my favorite because it is my mom’s favorite. My current book, Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, is a poetic scrapbook investigating the universal narratives of tattoos. Through the voice of artist or canvas, survivor or prisoner, you or I—the collection captures the personal and shared accounts of the people part of the tattoo ethos. As poet Kristen Prevallet says, the book is “a careful poetic ethnography of tattooed bodies and the stories that they tell.” This book is my favorite because it tells their stories.