A mass of feathers: love poems, by Rachel Vinciguerra

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

A mass of feathers is a collection of love poems–to Rachel’s grandparents who she lost within 6 months of each other, to her body during a painful and hopeful journey with cancer in her 20s, to her partners in life, both human and winged. The poems weave in and out of nature–the shore, a Pittsburgh riverside, an open courtyard under the stars in Haiti–and are fascicles of love beyond simple romance.

A mass of feathers is a meditation on healthcare, class, immigration, inequity, and ancestry. In this collection, time folds into itself, bending and molding a sense of identity in the context of family. In parts, inspired by her Italian-American grandparents, Haitian husband, and her first-generation English grandmother who kept her family’s history, the poems are an intergenerational and intercultural dialogue.

The collection blurs the lines between holy and human, sacred and mundane, longing and grieving, through encounters with memory, love, and our reciprocal connection to the world.

RACHEL VINCIGUERRA (she/her) lives ten minutes from the nearest river in Pittsburgh with her husband, cat, and chickens. She is a poetry and prose writer and young adult cancer survivor. Months before her diagnosis, Rachel was named one of Pittsburgh's 30 Under 30 for leading a national network of grassroots nonprofits welcoming immigrants and refugees. Her poetry can be found in Rising Phoenix Review, Emerge Literary Journal’s scissors and spackle publication, Hole in the Head Review, and others. Rachel writes a newsletter called "Time & Tide" at rachelvinciguerra.substack.com and is working on a memoir about her experience with cancer and learning to live with groundlessness and hold hope gently.