Description

These poems don't whisper. They bruise, ache, laugh, and want.

In Rough Cut Until I Bleed, Charles Harvey delivers a collection of poems that refuse to behave—poems shaped by longing, shame, queer desire, memory, and the body. Here, love is never clean, healing is never complete, and beauty arrives with teeth.

A lover's touch becomes a wound. A childhood memory becomes a weapon. A prayer becomes a joke—then a prayer again.

Harvey writes in the space where vulnerability meets heat, where joy and damage share the same skin:

My hips are big as money bags / and heavy with gold / I am suffering / I am happy.

These are poems for anyone who has loved too hard, wanted too deeply, or carried a hunger that refused to quiet itself.
Bold. Tender. Unapologetically human.

If you like the emotional fire of Danez Smith, the intimacy of Saeed Jones, or the fearless confession of Essex Hemphill, this book belongs on your nightstand.

From the Book

That noise beat on my ears. A mad saxophone player filled the room with his insanity. My eyes got all crossed trying to keep up with the digital readout running across the clock's face like a flow of red water. I couldn't stand it anymore. That's when I noticed them.

6 9

The world has secrets
Behind secrets and
Puppets ruled by puppets
You think the game is sixty-nine
But you're a dog, Dawg
Chasing his rainbow tail.
Round and round you go
Until you wake too late.
The catch is twenty-two
Three strikes and you're out.

Happy

My manhood rots
in the garden
of cabbage leaves.
Where children once grew
yellow fat drips
and splatters my thighs.
My hips are big as money bags
and heavy with gold
I am suffering.
I am happy.

The poem Apocalypse from this book recently appeared on the blog site NEWVERSENEWS.