I Own Nothing and I Belong Nowhere

In her dreamy debut, Alivia Francis ruminates, prays, drinks, bathes, whispers, and aches. She eats apples with jam. She wraps fingers around other fingers. She asks for forgiveness from her knees. She yearns from her back. She decides to be French. She stares out the window. She begs like a dog.

Her poems explore the lust, shame, and confessions of a melancholic young life with a style that recalls her mid-20th century precedents but lives right here in the present, alongside all of us contemporary wolves. Throughout this collection of new work, Francis negotiates her way through all the guilt and surrender and malady of youth, choosing through salvific poetic form, to instead, somehow, be well.