[Waiting Room], by Maya Collins

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Inspired by the work of Louise Gluck, the poet harnesses Greek  Mythology as a lens through which to consider our most fundamental human experiences. Rich with an unusual amalgamation of modern and mythological imagery, the collection’s principle concern is that mundane yet dreadfully persistent act of waiting.

The reader is invited to enter this chapbook as one enters a hospital waiting room. This is that in-between space: the home we did not plan on, the place that no one prepared for us. It is a refugee encampment, it is the shade on the side of a road, it is a “bedroom” in a psych ward. This collection does not offer an escape—you will not hear your name called by a nurse, there will be no healing nor help in some proceeding room. Instead, each poem will investigate the nature of the waiting room itself. There is a beauty in the thing we wait for, the thing we dream of. But there is also a beauty in that brave and terrifying act of hoping for something more. Being broken, and uncertain if the mending will ever come. Not knowing, yet continuing to hold on. To dream, even.

Maya Collins is a published author, professional artist, and member of the Girls Write Now Collaboratory. Their work is featured or forthcoming in The Blue Marble Review, Tension Literary, The Alexandrian Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Applause Journal, Kodon, Oddball Magazine, the Girls Write Now 2023 Anthology, the Girls Write Now 2024 Anthology, Querencia Press’ Not Ghosts But Spirits Volume V, and Beyond the Veil Press 2025 Pride Anthology.They are a rising Sophomore at Wheaton College as a Studio Art and English Writing double major. More of their work can be viewed on their instagram, @poems_by_maya.