Book of Spells Poems

WINNER OF THE 2026 AMERICAN LEGACY AWARDThe Book of Spells is a collection of poems that believes the world around us is shaped and reshaped by language and that changing our language is a revolutionary act of political and social magic that can replace long-standing destructive agreements with the benignity of loving clarity. This collection of spells begins by following the tracks of a mythical creature composed of language and blood across an unblemished field of silence. We can never catch this creature, who perhaps is made real by our pursuit of it. There are glimpses—shadows—made into poems in a poor attempt to construct the whole from the parts. This book is a brush dipped in flowers—corpses—schoolyards—the smell of ocean and tears attempting to paint over without erasing the world we’ve constructed as it is.