“This glorious debut is a life well-loved and asks us to wrap our own lives around us like a handmade blanket, to settle into the creature comforts, with our hungers, with our aches and sorrows, and yes, with our ironies and our, dare we, our joys. These poems hum in the joy, a balm of fruit and the bodies of birds the sky let go, small but necessary graces for all us misfits. This collection celebrates queerness with a chorus of swamp-song. Gentle, kind, unflinching in the way of one who tends wounds, who will not look away until the poison is out, who will sit with the pain as long as needed, and then rejoice with the relief when it comes, wholeheartedly, Marisa P. Clark takes in the world and gives it back to us, mended when possible, returned to the ritual of dust and prayer when necessary. Marisa, with her birdsong and her birds who speak human, allows us into her family in these pages. BIRD is a meditation labyrinth, an aviary, a bosque for all us wild creatures. I love this collection completely.”
—JENN GIVHAN, author of Belly to the Brutal

“In her debut collection, Marisa P. Clark gives voice to the patient teacher, the black sheep celebrating holidays with friends instead of relatives, the lover filled with regret, and the daughter always calling and crossing the country to care for her aging mother. She writes in the company of dogs, hawks, lonely barn swallows, roadrunners, an African gray, and doves fighting at the birdfeeder to find her desire for ‘flight and song’ in an era of constant worry and political turmoil. She wisely reflects on solitude and celebrates enduring friendships, and she knows when to let the poems run wild.”
—JUAN J. MORALES, author of The Handyman‘s Guide to End Times

“Marisa P. Clark’s BIRD is not just a collection of poems—it’s an intimate and captivating conversation that unfolds across pages rich with the complexities of the human spirit. Her poetry navigates the multifaceted skies of love, family, childhood, identity, queerness, and self-discovery with vulnerability and resilience. With a speaker ‘bruised / from making / love / that planet / this star (baby / I are) the galaxy / & a worm- / hole / to a world,’ the music in these poems captures the intensity of relationships but always with a wish ‘to treat with tenderness,’ reflecting a resounding yearning for gentleness in a harsh world. Clark finds connection and belonging in unexpected places—with lines like ‘I’ve spent the past year / clearing dead things off my path,’ these poems make us feel deeply and travel paths to the understanding of our own humanity. Can you fall in love with a book of poems during the first reading? In the case of Clark’s BIRD, the answer is yes, you definitely can—and you will return to these stunning poems again and again.”
—KELLI RUSSELL AGODON, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides

“BIRD, by Marisa P. Clark, is filled with birds—birds dead and alive, mating and alone; birds as flight and freedom; birds as fragility and power; birds as in ‘flipping the bird’ to everything that might hold one down. This is a book about the queer body, loneliness and desire, nature as solace, nature as violence. With wit and lyricism, tenderness and delight, Clark writes poignantly of birds she has buried that become poems taking flight.”
—LORI OSTLUND, author of After the Parade and The Bigness of the World

MARISA P. CLARK grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and came out in Atlanta, Georgia, in the bars where the Indigo Girls got their start. In addition to degrees in psychology and 20th–century American literature from the University of Southern Mississippi, she holds a PhD in fiction-writing from Georgia State University. Her prose and poetry appear in many literary magazines, including Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Epiphany, Foglifter, Free State Review, Sundog Lit, Texas Review, and Verse Daily. In 2011, Best American Essays recognized her nonfiction among its Notable Essays. She has served on the editorial staffs of several literary magazines, most notably New England Review and Five Points, and has taught creative writing at the University of New Mexico for more than two decades. She has also worked for a law firm, a bookstore, two advertising and graphics shops, and the Centers for Disease Control, where she was a technical information specialist in the library. A proud member of the queer community, she makes her home with three parrots, two dogs, and whatever wildlife and strays chance to visit. Her first name is pronounced Ma-REE-sa.

BIRD is her debut poetry collection. Her novel Hermosa, a finalist in numerous first-book contests, is represented by Laura Blake Peterson of Curtis Brown, Ltd.