Glitter Road by January Gill O'Neil

A beautiful portrait of how joy is an act of resistance.   “My poems brought me to Oxford, Mississippi a.k.a. the velvet ditch: / a place you can fall into, get comfortable among confederate rebels,” writes January Gill O’Neil in her stunning new collection, Glitter Road. The poems in this book look back at the end of a marriage, a heartbreaking loss, and a new relationship against the backdrop of a Mississippi season. O’Neil reflects on the history and legacy of Emmett Till, how his story is intertwined with her own, and wades through the incredible grief she feels for herself, her children, and the Black children who won’t come home tonight. These poems reclaim the vulnerable, intimate parts of a life in transition and celebrate womanhood through awakenings, landscapes, meanders, and possibilities. She declares, with both self-love and conviction, “I am done telling the kinder story. I am a myth of my own making.”