Sundress Publications announces the release of Nicole Oquendo’s chapbook, Space Baby: Episodes I-III.
Drifting through extraterrestrial worlds, poet Nicole Oquendo explores the raw power of deep, yet unsustainable love. Oquendo balances tension and passion, delving into the visceral nature of desire while depicting its inherent toxicity. In these futuristic poems is a passionate but destructive alien affair, wherein love engenders chaos. The cohesion of these lovers is intimate but dangerous, and an embrace can ascend to asphyxiation.
As the two beings grow closer they are ensnared, each simultaneously metamorphosing into captor and prisoner, paramour and adversary. In these pages, vivisection is an act of intimacy, and loving someone is akin to willingly tipping one’s face to a sky that rains glass. This chapbook examines longing for someone while wishing to escape them. While these poems demonstrate that the heat of passion can transform sand from grit to crystal, they also question whether such a thing is worth the sacrifice. It seems that to love something is to kill it. To love something is to burn.
After reading this chapbook, Amy Watkins, author of Milk and Water, said, “Space Baby: Episodes I-III is violent and kinky and weirdly redemptive. Like all of Oquendo’s writing, it is clear and lyrical and just tender enough to disrupt expectations. You would be wise to savor these poems, but you may not be able to resist reading them all in one breathless go as I did.”
Nicole Oquendo is especially interested in nontraditional, multimodal compositions and translations in all genres. Their work can be found in numerous literary journals, as well as in the chapbooks some prophets, self is wolf, wringing gendered we, and Space Baby, and in the hybrid memoir Telomeres. They have also curated the Sundress Publications anthology Manticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities. Nicole has also been serving the community since 2000, giving time as an editor to several literary journals and presses, and has been working as a writing educator since 2008.
Download your copy for free here.
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