Dr. Mercilee Jenkins is a poet, performance artist and playwright. Her poems have been published in the Healing Muse, San Francisco Chronicle and Reinventing Home as well as other small press journals and anthologies. She was a winner of Poets Eleven, San Francisco’s citywide poetry contest. It’s Later Than You Think, her most resent solo performance piece, was presented by 3Girls Theatre in San Francisco in 2024. Her 10-minute play, 50 Love Letters, was presented by L.A.’s Road Theatre Company in 2021. Her one act play, Winning, is included in Best American Short Plays 2014-15. She performed poetry from this collection at San Francisco’s Babylon Salon in 2025. She is an Emerita Professor of Communication Studies from San Francisco State University.
PRAISE:
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Words You Can’t Eat in Public meets the promise of such a title. M. Jenkins leaves us small surprises in all kinds of places. Read the poems out loud because they should be in the air, winking at us, like raindrops.
—K. Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Author of Pick a Garnet to Sleep In
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Multimedia performance writer Mercilee Jenkins has created a remarkable document in her debut collection of prose poems. Words You Can’t Eat in Public is a chronicle of a city haunted by a cast of bright, shimmering souls, both natural and supernatural. Her wit and sharp eyed characterizations sketch out a place that could be nothing less than a home for “People walking barely visible, wrapped inside their blankets” and “shape shifting shadows” in need of meaning and community. This collection is nothing less than a manifesto for perhaps the most sublime city in the world that manages to retain its “ghosts” despite the onrush of modernity into its alleys and side streets.
–Paul Corman-Roberts, author of Bone Moon Palaceand19th Street Station Volume 2
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Despite the title, Words I Can’t Eat in Public is a tasty morsel of a book. Insightful illuminations and ruminations about love, sex, city living, writing, family and loss, carved into the page with succinct wit and poetic flair. Mercilee Jenkins is a delightful writer and these are good, delicious words, deserving of a fine tablecloth and silver platter.
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