MOUTH WIDE SHUT by Kelly Grace Thomas

Mouth Wide Shut is a wild ride through poet Kelly Thomas’ interior and exterior world, exploring race, gender, body and other “othernesses.” Often ironic, always filled with the music of language and a curiosity about its boundaries, this is a bold book that acknowledges our vulnerability: “I find holes in everything. Say/something.” Thomas knows the dangers of speaking, and we, her readers, are grateful that she does it anyway.

–Pauletta Hansel—Cincinnati Poet Laureate, 2018-2018

Kelly Thomas is looking at you straight in the eye through these poems. You better stand up, pay attention, feel what it’s like to be seen, to be unseen, understand that you better love, open your eyes, listen harder, now—let the ludic groove of these punchy, deftly political poems ratchet you up and hold you.

–Cathy Wagner—author of Nervous Device (2012), My New Job (2009), Macular Hole (2004) and associate professor of English at Miami University of Ohio