Grief is a Place with a Hole Inside

Grief is a Place with a Hole Inside is an unsparing collection about the architecture of loss: the rooms we inherit, the stories we revise, and the absences that become permanent fixtures in our lives. With lyricism, wit, and startling emotional candor, Jay Orlando traces grief across generations—from the death of a mother and the unraveling of a father to the accumulated disasters of addiction, violence, illness, and the ordinary heartbreaks of being human. These poems inhabit the unstable territory between memory and myth, rage and tenderness, faith and doubt, asking what remains when the people who made us are gone. Yet beneath the elegies is an insistence on survival and the stubborn miracle of continuing. Grief is a Place with a Hole Inside is a book about what death takes from us—and about the strange, beautiful things we grow in the space left behind.

About the Author

Jay Orlando is a trans, queer, folk punk poet hailing from the region of Pennsylvania where the Appalachians kiss the Rust Belt. He lives with his partner and cats in a town that shares a name with a state. When not writing, Jay enjoys playing games (video and board), practicing guitar, and singing karaoke. You can follow him and his adventures on Instagram @jaybird.orlando