MEN I INVENTED DURING A FEVER DREAM (paperback)

alexis briscuso is a writer and film critic living in brooklyn. she’s one of the biggest repeat offenders at HAD, with other work at gulf coast journal, maudlin house, vagabond city, WAS quarterly, voicemail poems, and elsewhere. you can find her criticism at vulture, the wrap, little white lies, i-D, the playlist, slashfilm, ign, mashable, inverse, film school rejects, paste, the guardian, fangoria, roger ebert, and more. she has been nominated for the pushcart and best microfiction awards, and this collection of poems is her first chapbook. you can find her tweeting SAW memes into the ether and posting irresponsible instagram stories, both @nikonamerica, if you’re still a cog in the social media machine, too.

"alexis briscuso is one of my favorite poets for many reasons, but most especially for her honesty and ruthless sense of language. to witness the lyrics unfold on her pages, it is a reward not often found in this wide open world of verse. 'men i invented during a fever dream' is sexy, vulnerable, familiar, and risky. perhaps there is something we can all learn from these poems; perhaps because these poems have already been written, we are all better because of it. this is a book mutating into steel, a collection of memories existing in a museum forever. 'men i invented during a fever dream' is the kind of revelation you’ll always need, a set of teeth biting something ugly into sheer beauty."

— matt mitchell, author of “vampire burrito"

"Singing or playing a musical instrument is, literally, good for your heart. I think about that when I read Alexis Briscuso's poems, hear their ontological throb: ‘right there that's / where it hurts.' They reassure: ‘don't you see there's an arc in all this / nonsense.' They bite back: ‘i don't make wishes on your breath anymore.' They build twin cathedrals of doubt & desire from Brooklyn flotsam and hip-hop records. They hold a you up on the throne of poetry, unafraid to clown on it or, in the right throes, coronate it with that 21st-century rose (& ultimate cringe risk!): the love poem. ‘tolstoy talks about the distance in / lovers eyes and the times when that space / closes. i've read it too many times.' I can't read this book enough."

— Tom Snarsky, author of “Reclaimed Water," “Complete Sentences," “Light-Up Swan,” and others 

"These poems are about love and longing and disenchantment and fantasy and disillusion and, even more, and maybe even more importantly, all the cracks and crevices and spaces and feelings in between. Alexis writes with a kind of minimalism and simplicity that strips away everything unnecessary to always be able to find the surprising, the new, the beautiful in those very crevices that could otherwise be so easily missed."

— Aaron Burch, author of “Year of the Buffalo,” editor of HAD