Announcing Girl Soldier

Coming February 2025

In 2021, I self-published my first poetry book, Broken Weekend. 

In my article Leave Literature Alone, I chronicle my fraught experiences in the Columbia University English department. The ostracism I experienced for my convictions that literature’s primary purpose was not to promote a political agenda often left me feeling down, yet poetry was always my solace. Curled up in Columbia’s Butler Library sometime around 2 a.m., I expressed much of my disillusionment in verse. One year after leaving Columbia, I collected many of my favorite college poems into an eighteen-poem chapbook that conveys my adolescent experiences as I navigated the literary landscape and grew into a more mature poet.

Two years later, after having experienced life in New York City as an adult, I published my second poetry collection Vintage Lovers, which explores themes of love and loss, as well as loneliness and isolation as a young adult in a big city. 

The following February, I meditated on the pangs of growing older in my third poetry collection Illicit Kingdom, whose closing poem “Exit” details my experiences moving to New York City as a teenager and the inevitability of change. 

This year, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a woman in the modern world—not in the annoying “I’m-oppressed” way but in a more sober, realistic sense. As someone who prioritizes career yet celebrates traditional family values, I’ve often wondered, for instance, how women can most effectively navigate these two seemingly contradictory roles, and, unfortunately, I have seen little conversation from the left about the importance of motherhood and little conversation from the right about ensuring that a mother can maintain a prosperous career. 

I attempt to answer these questions and many others in my newest poetry book, Girl Soldier, coming to Amazon this February 2025. I’ve spent a lot of this past year writing poems, and I’m so excited to share my favorite ones with you in my latest collection.

To celebrate Girl Soldier’s upcoming release, I’d like to share the collection’s titular poem with you all in this week’s Pens and Poison post. Have a read below, and don’t forget to subscribe to Pens and Poison to be the first to hear when Girl Soldier drops. 

Girl Soldier 

When we were as wooden leaders
Done up in an antique theater 
Dangling from a plus-sign stick 
I would have never clipped your feelers 
Seen you wielding a machine 
That hurdled men into unrest 

Together we would dance around like pioneers 
Beneath the awning overseeing Lenin’s reign 

Would you have wanted then to undermine our cabaret?
These brutish fiends who jabber in the gym 
Yapping over barbell slams and unctuous  
Proceedings
Muscle spasms in the evening 
Over candlelit careenings 
Playing with the candle wax— 
Do they mean a thing to me?

At least your temper might have 
Waded through the trestles 
Mess hall with those metal mirrors  
Plastic plates and plastic leaders 
In my vision you were seizing 
Silver-toned resplendent earrings 
Somewhere in a brittle meadow 
Wedged between me and my pleadings 
You waxed bohemian

Lost in folly’s black penumbra 
This is an unstable dealing 
Proper nuisance pumped out from a private school 
Polo shirts and loafers
Aviators on your head 

Every day I think of passing by your office 
Sometime around 4pm 
Round about the flag that overlooks 
The outskirts of the river 

And you were smiling just like a marine 
Thought you’d be too fragile to subsist in war
Too absorbed to save your country 
As you made yourself anathema to me 

I was seething last September
Took you into a latrine 
There I thought that I should 
Kiss you on your dirty knees 

And if I were a girl soldier
Maybe I could follow in your wake 

You could always change it back 
Instead of breathing this inclement weather 
You’ll be sure to catch a cold 
Well what’s the point of that?

And I wouldn’t trust you with a gun 
I would not deem you my defender  

In the mess hall I am crawling on my knees 
In the sixties
Soldiers were sent off to fight in fracas
There to simmer and to sing
And if I were a girl soldier 
You’d be marching in my own brigade 

I am not your brain’s alembic 
There to waft off all the terrible 
Things 

Flaunting your medallions and wings 
We are in this banquet that extends towards infinity 
In the brambles of decay 
When you left me for this patriot’s assay 

Enjoyed Girl Solider? Leave me your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to Pens and Poison to be notified of the release of my latest poetry collection. 

See you over on Amazon in February!