NEW RELEASE | Fifth Wheel Press 2025
Written in the aftermath of a close friend's suicide, this poetry collection delves into the specific grief that comes with suicide.
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“Beautiful and arresting in its exploration of what's left in the aftermath of suicide, Jessica Nirvana Ram's in the aftermath makes me want to hug my friends and honor my dead better. The poems are wide-spanning in form—free-verse and a staggering crown of sonnets—yet focused on a singular person, a singular event that leaves its speaker in the middle of memory, ideation, and so, so much longing. For lovers of grief and girlhood, this chapbook is sure to bring you to your knees.”
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—KB Brookins, award-winning author of Pretty
Debut Collection | Game Over Books 2024
“Jessica Nirvana Ram’s Earthly Gods wrestles the angel of belief to our mundane sphere, incarnating as devotion to divinity and ancestors, shifting into a love wincing from the searing beauty of the world. From the tender renderings of a grandmother’s praying hands to incantations to the departed to the rivers that are the women throughout this book, these poems teem with diasporic wonderments and heartaches. Rituals described and deities invoked, Ram’s debut chants the sincerest ode of my own heart as the speaker prophesizes, “The marrow of your bones will sprout dandelions.” All I can see after reading this is a summer field filled with small petaled suns lifting up their heads from the green in praise.”
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—Rajiv Mohabir, author of Whale Aria