Dustin Brookshire
Dustin Brookshire, a finalist for the 2021 Scotti Merrill Award, is the founder/editor of Limp Wrist and curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, a Zoom based poetry reading series. He is the author of the chapbooks Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Dustin’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been published in or is forthcoming in Assaracus, Whiskey Island, Mollyhouse, The West Review, Oddball, Gulf Stream Magazine, Redheaded Stepchild, SubtleTea, Ocho, Oranges & Sardines, Ouroboros, Qarrtsiluni, Blue Fifth Review, and other publications. He has been anthologized in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012) and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writes on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014).
Praise for Love Most Of You Too:
In Love Most Of You Too, Dustin Brookshire’s second chapbook—a funny, tender, smart, utterly winning collection of poetry—Brookshire lets us know, “it’s OK not to accept what’s in front of you at face value.” His poems explore the vicissitudes, limitations and foibles of life and love, sometimes hilariously, sometimes subtly, sometimes with the force of a razor blade to a wrist. The book both pays tribute to his poetic idol, Denise Duhamel, and solidly establishes Brookshire’s singularly sassy, incisive confessional voice. From the more serious poems that address homophobia to the politically charged poems to the hilarious “Rule #3 of Sexual Relations” (a delightful romp, impossible to summarize), emotional acuity, ferocity, and facility with form are on full display in this page-turning gem.
—Beth Gylys, author of Body Braille
Dustin Brookshire knows what happens when the right wing tries to shut down his voice— “censorship will only make the world want it more.” In Love Most Of You Too, he offers intimate, political poems in which dreamscapes, what-if’s, and celebrity culture inform our daily rituals and relationships. Brookshire’s writing is full of humor, tenderness, and sass. You will want this book. You will find yourself in it.
—Denise Duhamel, author of Second Story
Brookshire's work is fiercely brave and bravely restless, ready to do the difficult but absolutely necessary work of wrestling with the status quo, with the injustices we overlook in order to keep things comfortable. The poems in Love Most Of You Too are not here to play nice. These are poems that cut to the bone of truth, their sharpness a marvel. And beneath them all beats an ardent heart that nonetheless loves this beautiful, if sometimes brutal, beast that we call living.
—Emma Bolden, author of House Is an Enigma
Read a review of “Love Most of You Too” on Harbor Review by Josh Davis.