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IMAGINARY FRENEMIES

Valerie Nies’ debut chapbook, Imaginary Frenemies, features advice from Bette Midler, memories from a training bra, salvation from Eddie Vedder, and taunts from super plus tampons. Like a rom-com starlet, the poems in this collection are both sexy and gawky, combining humor and nostalgia with truths that comfort and punch.

These poems are awkward, sexy, questioning and cutting all in the same breath. Nies writes in a way that feels like she’s leaning in and you better listen, because she’s about to tell you the secrets of the universe.

—Megan Falley, author of Drive Here and Devastate Me

Moving gracefully from humor to heartbreak, belligerence to tenderness, these poems assemble a portrait of the contemporary artist and the lengths to which one must go to be truly seen. This poet knows how to patch up a heart.

—Brendan Constantine, author of Dementia, My Darling

You’ll find nostalgia but not the self-absorbed kind; it’s the form that hits your brainstem and floods your body with pleasure. You’ll find poems that are simultaneously hilarious and haunted.

—James Davis May, author of Unquiet Things

Imaginary Frenemies holds within its pages a long-lost friend you never knew you needed. Nies's control of the language and her stunning imagery allow this book to crackle with a beautiful fierceness and intensity.
—Erica Abbott, author of Self-Portrait as a Sinking Ship (Toho, 2020)