Overview

A pulpy, mytho-poetic dispatch from an ""anarchist jurisdiction"" that explores the liberatory possibilities of community and womanhood. Enter: Local Woman, an archetypal figure, fresh from the forest into the streets of Portland, Oregon. She is a Black trans woman, seeking survival and satisfaction, giving seduction, disenfranchisement, and the contradictions of femme womanhood a face, body, and soul. In sensual, evocative lyrics, Jzl Jmz documents Local Woman's movement through natural disaster, anti-fascist protest, romantic engagements, and an expanding sense of personal autonomy.

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9781643622736

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Reviews

""At the root of these emotionally searing and formally imaginative poems—at times irreverent, at times subversively poised—I recognize and affirm the most human of desires: to be accounted for by the world into which you were born, to see and be seen, to love and be loved. Jzl Jmz’s is a vital voice, to which I hope everyone will listen, and Local Woman a triumphant book I hope everyone will read."" —Charif Shanahan ""In a world ravaged by a hostile political landscape and the relentless drones of white supremacy, Local Woman vigilantly pushes back against the idea that hardening one’s self is our only path of resistance. Here, Jmz’s poems assert power by donning the silken garments of vulnerability—prayers eager to confess the human desire to be held, needed and believed. Local Woman is an elegant throne where a knife sleeps beneath its velvet exterior. What a blessing."" —Rachel McKibbens ""Skinny cig, long nails, period at the end of the title . . . not to mention cigarette warning packaging!""—Language Arts ""The book has swagger–you can see it in the cover image, which has what looks like the warning on a cigarette pack."" —Ashley Honeysett, I Recommend Books ""Local Woman is a tribute to the resonating intimacies of what it’s like to be a woman and relish it. A sensual entanglement with the universe, I too wish for Jupiter."" —Nikki Wallschlaeger ""The Local Woman of this third blazing collection from Jzl Jmz is mother, ex, sweetheart, and tireless lover who greets us from“hot bitch” “dirty dish dystopia.” The tenaciousness of Jzl’s poetic technique, her trademark spinning centrifuge of musical and literary references, straddle the line between echo and embodiment, coloring this lush and festering thing we call life. Local Woman is a heart-stopping, luminous, and timely book that we are so fortunate to have at every world’s end."" —Muriel Leung

“A voice I come to trust meets rhythmic and sonic radiance; syntactic and formal muscularity vibrates. These are lushly lyrical poems that, even so, live in the world. If duende can come from acknowledgment of the possibility of death, and the fullness of life that comes alongside that realization, then the beloved goblin of goosebumps surely rises up here.” –Oliver Baez Bendorf

Author Information

jzl jmz (FKA Jayy Dodd) beamed down in Los Angeles '92 and is reuploading herself to the internet. She is the author of Mannish Tongues (2017) and The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat Books, 2019). She edited Bettering American Poetry Vol. 2 (2017) and A Portrait in Blues (2019). She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow, a Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland's Institute of Contemporary Art, and Artist-in-Residence at Ori Gallery, and her film and performance works have been installed & screened across the country. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

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