Pecking Order

Pecking Order

Nicole Homer's first full-length poetry collection,  Pecking Order , is an unflinching look at how race and gender politics play out in the domestic sphere.  Homer challenges the notion of family by forcing the reader to examine how race, race performance, and colorism impact motherhood immediately and from generation to generation. In a world where race and color often determine treatment, the home should be sanctuary, but often is not.  Homer's poems question the construction of racial identity and how familial love can both challenge and bolster that construction. Her poems range from the intimate details of motherhood to the universal experiences of parenting; the dynamics of multiracial families to parenting black children; and the ingrained social hierarchy which places the black mother at the bottom.  Homer forces us to reckon with the truth that no one-not even the mother-is unbiased. "Pecking Order awakens in me a desire to remember fear at its most immense: when it spills from our desire to keep close those we love, even as they grow out from us and into danger. Yes, it is a stunning portrayal of where the interior of motherhood and the nuance of race intersect. But, more than anything, Homer is a poet of sharp articulation of fear, love, and the small hums of comfort in between. More than simply poems, Pecking Order is also about the exhausting journey of being seen, Black and in public—in grocery stores, on vacation, in rooms not your own. This is a stellar collection, one that speaks to every edge of an experience and echoes out, leaving a harsh and beautiful longing in its wake." – Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, author of The Crown Ain't Worth Much "There are many ways to mother a revolution; Nicole Homer is a shining example. Homer demystifies the totem of mammy, doting nana, and childless woman in the unhinging collection Pecking Order. Whether investigating Blackness, femininity, or loss, Homer's poems sever the reader's sensibilities, teetering dangerously between love, frenetic self-(re)-discovery, and comedic cynicism. These poems serve as a legend for how to raise human beings while learning how to hold tightly to your own woman frame. The excavation process causes both grimace and joy as each page unfolds and gifts the reader with sounds of children laughing, a new mother worrying, or the firm grandmother advising: 'the sweetest plum is the one on the verge of rot.' Nicole Homer is our Matron Saint of 'Mothers Bring Your Weary Self & Get Free or Laugh 'til You Cry'—and she didn't even apply for the gig." – Mahogany L. Browne, author of Redbone (NAACP Nominee 2015) "The poems in Pecking Order are electric with interrogation and revelation. Here, Nicole Homer navigates the cost and demands of domesticity and Black American motherhood with a fanged precision. What I love most about these poems is how incisive Homer's voice is, even at her most sardonic—she always lets vulnerability take center stage, confronting race and motherhood with equal parts ferocity and introspection." – Rachel McKibbens, author of Pink Elephant Nicole Homer is an Associate Professor of English at a community college in Central New Jersey. They are a poet, writer, and performer whose work can be found in the American Academy of Poets Poem-a-Day, Muzzle, The Offing, Rattle, The Collagist and elsewhere. A fellow of The Watering Hole, Callaloo and VONA, Nicole serves as a Contributing Editor at BlackNerdProblems writing pop culture critique through a POC lens. Their award-winning collection, Pecking Order (Write Bloody) is an unflinching look at how race and gender politics play out in the domestic sphere. She is honored to have shared stages with poets in slams across the country, to be the 2018 Dartmouth Poet-in-Residence at The Frost Place, to be a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and to be alive. Things Only a Black Mother Can Prepare You For The oldest sat in the passenger seat. He grew his first mustache at thirteen. His little brother's chest was still a birdcage sitting in the backseat of his best friend's Chevy. Jason was crooked gap grin, dirty jokes, and the only white face. Among the five boys, he was the smallest by one and a quarter inches. His dick jokes all had the same punch line. Jason sat in the backseat between two black boys, each of them next to a rolled down window. In the front, two more black boys, two more open windows. All five sang in unison with the radio and prayed to the same god. For years now they had whispered in the back of their church about girls who stood in the front of the church whispering about them. The four black boys in the car thought about their mothers when they passed the sedan, white and unmarked. Jason sat in the middle of the backseat with no warning rising up in him. His mother had never bought flowers for a young man's funeral or advised her son how to avoid attending his own: Say 'Yes, Offi