Bloodletting

Poetry that considers the nature of relationships in an age mediated by social media and impacted by violence.

This is a collection of poems about how we find and cultivate love amid wars, including wars that often go ignored. Throughout Bloodletting, Kimberly Reyes considers how we define love and who gets to experience it, paying special attention to the ways that race and sex influence how we are perceived and valued by society. Through the voice of a Black woman coming to terms with her own perspectives on relationship-building, Reyes shows the damage that contemporary culture can do to women, and Black women in particular. Resisting passivity, Reyes's poetry cuts through pervasive doom scrolling, virtue signaling, and parasocial relationships, inviting readers to remember what care is really supposed to feel like.