Author: Jasmine Vallejo-Love

Jasmine Vallejo-Love is a disabled Afro-Puerto Rican American poet and writer living in Los Angeles. A Diana Woods Memorial Award finalist, 2025 Lambda Literary Fellow, and selected for PEN America’s Emerging Voices workshop, her work has been anthologized and appears in journals, such as Lunch Ticket and Cholla Needles.

Categories
Poetry

Poetry Issue #81

"details in the fabric a stubborn soul trying to make gumdrops of lemon oh so bitter and so sweet," 13.5" x 10.5", colored pencil on paper, graphite and embroidery thread on fabric, pins on panel, 2025
"details in the fabric a stubborn soul trying to make gumdrops of lemon oh so bitter and so sweet," 13.5" x 10.5", colored pencil on paper, graphite and embroidery thread on fabric, pins on panel, 2025

Artwork by Nicole Sylvia Javorsky

Having Severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder is Crippling Me into Agoraphobia He leaves to walk the dog: a mundane task I imagine him shanked prison-style. Dog kicked or taken. I see a Dodge Charger run him over like Death Race 3000 for points. Mangled body flattened as if steamrolled. Dog whimpering, tongue lapping a bloodied disfigured […]