Hey. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are.

This is my first post for 2025. It’s a bit late, but I’ve been fairly inconsistent with these over the last couple years. Or, maybe I’m consistently inconsistent. 

I want to talk about a project I was a part of at the tail end of 2024. It’s called Sleeve of Hearts, a poetry anthology. 

“Poetry?” you asks? 

Yeah, poetry. I know, I know. I don’t write poetry. Well … that’s not necessarily true. You see …

Wait. Wait. Concentrate. Too many voices in my head. 

I’m not here to discuss me writing poetry. I’m here to tell you about Sleeve of Hearts, a poetry anthology put out by Lindsey Goddard and Weird Wide Web. What started out as a contest over at the Weird Wide Web website with a possible ten winners, quickly morphed into something much larger. Instead of limiting the contest to those ten winners, Goddard decided to turn it into an anthology. 

You see, Goddard asked the authors considering submission to bare their souls, to essentially put their hearts on their sleeves. When I write poetry, it’s always a baring of my soul. There’s such raw emotion in every poem. Almost every poet I know is exactly the same. Poetry can be whimsical and fun, but more often, it’s a way to deal with deep, deep scars, traumas, hurts, disappointments, depression, anxiety, and anger.

I paid attention to Goddard during this, read her posts about it. The excitement she exuded about curating this book made me consider submitting. I knew the poem I wanted to submit, but I was hesitant. You see, my poem, is about suicide. It’s such a taboo subject and I don’t understand why. It’s an important topic we should talk more about. 

When I finally decided to send my piece in, I was, honestly, nervous. With the piece being so personal, I wasn’t sure how I felt about others reading it. Not that I didn’t think it was good. I fully believed it was, but I’m not a poet and I was asking my piece to be stacked against some amazing poets. And poetry, being personal, means there is a story behind it. It’s a story I’ve talked about a few times and it’s also why so many of my short stories over the last few years deal with the subject of suicide. I’ll discuss that at a later date.

For now, let me go back to December, to Goddard’s excitement, her exuberance, her determination that Sleeve of Hearts was going to be amazing. Having worked with her in the past, I really felt this could be something special, simply because she was baring her own soul right along with her authors. 

My poem was accepted the same day I sent it in. I was in. I was in.

The editing and formatting phases came and I received a copy to look over. I was to make sure my poem was formatted right, on the right page, my name was right and to go through it to make sure nothing more needed done to the poem. What I did was read the book, from beginning to end over a couple hours one morning. When I was finished, I thought, Holy cow, that was amazing. There are so many great pieces in this book. I was floored that I was alongside such amazing artists.

Sleeve of Hearts was released on December 29th and in less than a week had made it to number one in the Poetry Anthologies category on Amazon. It was cool seeing that ranking for a few days.

Now that all the release buzz has died, I’ve taken another look at the anthology. It’s better than I thought. There’s so much heart, so much pain, so much realness in this collection of poems. It’s insane. I firmly believe this book will win some awards. Listen, y’all know me. I’m not about hyperbole. I don’t even sing such high praises for my own books. This is something special. 

So, now that you’ve read this far, this is where I ask you to get a copy of Sleeve of Hearts. This is where I say drop a handful of bills to read some amazing poetry. It doesn’t matter if you don’t read poetry—I don’t either, for the most part. It doesn’t matter if you find poetry bland—these pieces are far from bland. Many of these authors you’ve probably never heard of. Sleeve of Hearts is a piece of their voices, a piece you get to experience. 

Pick up a copy HERE. You will enjoy this book. Also, after you read it, you might search for some of the authors in here. You won’t regret that either. 

Thank you for swinging by on this cold day. Until we meet again, my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J.