Burnt Toast and Benedictions, by Laura DeHart Young

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. Burnt Toast and Benedictions is a tender, unflinching meditation on the fractures of domestic life—where humor and heartbreak share intimate spaces, where everyday moments carry weight. In this ten-poem collection, Laura DeHart Young explores the quiet ruptures that occur in love, memory, and unforeseen moments: burnt toast scraped clean, a dead fly floating in a beer, Oreos eaten by firelight in a broken-down cabin, rhythms of attraction in an autumn rainstorm. These poems move between rural and urban landscapes, tracing what is lost and what we salvage—from relationships to resilience. With warmth and clarity, Young writes about the intimate spaces where grief simmers beneath sarcasm, where tenderness wears flannel and lavender soap, and where apologies are sometimes shaped like butter knives or the warmth of a blanket offering. Each poem serves as both confession and communion, blessing the imperfections that mark a shared life. What does it mean to stay? To leave? To settle a score with grief? To find joy when a crow visits at 125 feet or the power goes out in a secluded mountain cabin? Burnt Toast and Benedictions doesn’t answer these questions but it sits beside them, patient and observant. Laura DeHart Young is a queer poet based in Atlanta whose work explores relationships, rural and urban landscapes, and the quiet weight of everyday moments. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Raven’s Perch, Book of Matches, Last Leaves Magazine, Does It Have Pockets?, The Bluebird Word, and elsewhere. She is also the author of seven novels published by Bella Books.