The Remains, by Joseph J. Norris

Poetry, chapbook, 48 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

How do you make sense of yourself, your relationships, your past, after you suffer a terrible and unexpected loss? What parts of yourself must you confront as you also confront your grief and the memories it brings to the forefront of your mind? And how do your relationships change with the ones you have left as they become lost in their own grief? These are some of the questions Joseph J. Norris explores in this chapbook, The Remains.

At the center of these poems is the narrator, who has just lost his brother and is now an only child. Through a series of poems with rotating addressees, we see the dissolution of their relationships and their selves in the wake of the loss. But sprinkled throughout are moments of innocence, warmth, and surrealism. And perhaps at least, the possibility of acceptance.

Joseph J. Norris graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in May of 2025. He has had short stories and poems published in Half and One, Gauge, Emerson Green Mag, won the Humans of the World Spring Poetry Prize, and made the Shortlist for the 2025 Letter Review Poetry Prize. He lives in Berkeley, California with his girlfriend Macie and their cat, Dory, and is learning how to play the guitar and the banjolin.