The Blood Poems is one part bloodletting, one part healing, and one part sensuous celebration as Jessica Helen Lopez lays out what it means to be a strong brown woman, a single mother, and the kickass bard that the twenty-first century needs.

The poems collected here insist that with the power to do right, people also have a responsibility to themselves, their loved ones, and complete strangers to be better and strive harder.

At its center, Duende de Burque is a love letter to Alburquerque and its surroundings—the Sandia Mountains, the Rio Grande Bosque, and all the people whose spirits fill these spaces.

In her debut poetry collection, Bosque, Otero celebrates the importance of water and the bosque to the people of Albuquerque.