Michael + Josephine. By Jo Reyes-Boitel
Michael + Josephine is an unexpected love story between St. Michael the Archangel reimagined as a queer woman, and Josephine, a multiethnic Latina who works as a disaster relief worker. Both have busy, full lives helping the world around them. Too busy for a relationship, they contend. Still, they are drawn together at a moment when crises around the world are at an all-time high. In navigating a new kind of love, both solidify the importance of personal and community connection.
"Michael + Josephine is the story of what every great love is—the clash of the everyday and the divine, the push and pull of what our lives demand and what our hearts long for, the hurt of everything we fight for and what we do not fight hard enough for. In these poems, jo reyes-boitel wields a pen that is feather light and scalpel sharp to dissect love, cauterize memory, and examine the unknowable."—ire’ne lara silva, author of Blood Sugar Canto and Cuicacalli/House of Song
"Jo’s content and poetic craft played like a jazz quartet between my ears - tender, reckless and delicious."—Anel I. Flores, author of Empanada, a Lesbiana Story en Probaditas
"Surrender to the considerable enchantments of Jo Reyes-Boitel’s magical book, Michael + Josephine: a novel in verse. Inhabit this tale of a complex relationship told in language that is lush, aggrieved, ecstatic, and simple. In poems that are at once visionary and every day, Reyes-Boitel steadfastly refuses to separate divinity from reality. She revels in both instead."—Jim LaVilla-Havelin, author of West, poems of a place
Michael + Josephine is an unexpected love story between St. Michael the Archangel reimagined as a queer woman, and Josephine, a multiethnic Latina who works as a disaster relief worker. Both have busy, full lives helping the world around them. Too busy for a relationship, they contend. Still, they are drawn together at a moment when crises around the world are at an all-time high. In navigating a new kind of love, both solidify the importance of personal and community connection.
"Michael + Josephine is the story of what every great love is—the clash of the everyday and the divine, the push and pull of what our lives demand and what our hearts long for, the hurt of everything we fight for and what we do not fight hard enough for. In these poems, jo reyes-boitel wields a pen that is feather light and scalpel sharp to dissect love, cauterize memory, and examine the unknowable."—ire’ne lara silva, author of Blood Sugar Canto and Cuicacalli/House of Song
"Jo’s content and poetic craft played like a jazz quartet between my ears - tender, reckless and delicious."—Anel I. Flores, author of Empanada, a Lesbiana Story en Probaditas
"Surrender to the considerable enchantments of Jo Reyes-Boitel’s magical book, Michael + Josephine: a novel in verse. Inhabit this tale of a complex relationship told in language that is lush, aggrieved, ecstatic, and simple. In poems that are at once visionary and every day, Reyes-Boitel steadfastly refuses to separate divinity from reality. She revels in both instead."—Jim LaVilla-Havelin, author of West, poems of a place
Michael + Josephine is an unexpected love story between St. Michael the Archangel reimagined as a queer woman, and Josephine, a multiethnic Latina who works as a disaster relief worker. Both have busy, full lives helping the world around them. Too busy for a relationship, they contend. Still, they are drawn together at a moment when crises around the world are at an all-time high. In navigating a new kind of love, both solidify the importance of personal and community connection.
"Michael + Josephine is the story of what every great love is—the clash of the everyday and the divine, the push and pull of what our lives demand and what our hearts long for, the hurt of everything we fight for and what we do not fight hard enough for. In these poems, jo reyes-boitel wields a pen that is feather light and scalpel sharp to dissect love, cauterize memory, and examine the unknowable."—ire’ne lara silva, author of Blood Sugar Canto and Cuicacalli/House of Song
"Jo’s content and poetic craft played like a jazz quartet between my ears - tender, reckless and delicious."—Anel I. Flores, author of Empanada, a Lesbiana Story en Probaditas
"Surrender to the considerable enchantments of Jo Reyes-Boitel’s magical book, Michael + Josephine: a novel in verse. Inhabit this tale of a complex relationship told in language that is lush, aggrieved, ecstatic, and simple. In poems that are at once visionary and every day, Reyes-Boitel steadfastly refuses to separate divinity from reality. She revels in both instead."—Jim LaVilla-Havelin, author of West, poems of a place
Jo Reyes-Boitel jo reyes-boitel is a queer, mixed Latinx poet and playwright, editor and scholar. jo is also an amateur hand percussionist. As an MFA graduate in Creative Writing from the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, jo was a Presidential Research Fellow and served as an undergraduate creative writing instructor. Publications include Michael + Josephine (FlowerSong Press, 2019), mouth (Neon Hemlock, 2021), and the matchstick litanies (Next Page Press, 2023). Their forthcoming book, the impracticality of silk: poems, will be released in July 2024. Recent publications include Zócalo Public Square, Huizache Magazine, and Acentos Review. jo has also written and produced “she wears bells”, a hybrid opera, which was a finalist in Guerilla Opera’s 2022 virtual festival. Their newest play, “susto”, was performed as part of Convergencia, an interdisciplinary gathering of artists within the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley. jo is a fellow of Macondo and VoNA/Voices of Our Nations.