Soft Apocalypse

By Leah Nieboer and Andrew Zawacki

Soft Apocalypse pirouettes in the “anemic glow” of late capitalism, its prose poems and lyrics performing in the civic pocket, in the offbeat, and by arrhythmias that offer improvisational measures for going on. Chrome angels, strange beloveds, and cool-eyed speakers cut speculative lines through precarious spaces of the present—deserts and nightscapes, neon-lit strips, corner stores, foreclosures, pharmacy queues, and “crumpled back alleys”—making imaginative economies, queer kinships, and alternative ways of being in the world. Nothing here is done with ease, but irreducible gifts do slip surreptitiously from palm to palm: after all, “we all need a little help sometimes / baby.”

Soft Apocalypse insistently edges these unofficial exchanges and intimate apprehensions against the official orders, projections, violations, and isolations of our time. Instead of calculating toward a dystopic ending, this book bets on its softer wrecks, a futurity in an intimately rewired collective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780820363707

Leah Nieboer

LEAH NIEBOER grew up in Iowa. She is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Denver, a graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the winner of the 2022 Mountain West Writers’ Contest in Poetry, and the recipient of a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Western Humanities Review, Poetry Daily, Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Ghost Proposal, and other publications. She lives in Denver and is at work on her first novel.

Book preview

THE GEORGIA POETRY PRIZE

The University of Georgia Press established the Georgia Poetry Prize in 2016 in partnership with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, and the University of Georgia. The prize is supported by the Bruce and Georgia McEver Fund for the Arts and Environment.

SOFT APOCALYPSE

SOFT APOCALYPSE

Leah Nieboer

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS

ATHENS

Published by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

© 2023 by Leah Nieboer

All rights reserved

Designed by Rebecca A. Norton

Set in Electra LT Std 9.5/20

Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.

Printed digitally

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nieboer, Leah, author.

Title: Soft apocalypse / Leah Nieboer.

Description: Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2023] | Series: The Georgia Poetry Prize | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022043817 (print) | LCCN 2022043818 (ebook) | ISBN 9780820363691 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780820363707 (ebook) | ISBN 9780820363714 (pdf)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3614.13549 S64 2023 (print) | LCC PS3614.13549 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6—dc23/eng/20220921

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043817

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043818

for my friends, dreamers all

CONTENTS

ONLY IN MY NIGHTS DID THE WORLD SLOWLY REVOLVE

MINOR EVENTS 1

ANGEL OF MEMPHIS

GUSTY WINDS MAY EXIST

FLASH PROCESSING OF A PRIVATE YEAR

ON A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, KILOMETERS AND KILOMETERS BELOW WHAT HAD BEEN A GREAT CITY

MINOR EVENTS 2

OR WAS LIVING LIKE A SLEEPWALKER THE GREATEST ACT OF TRUST?

I LET HER GO ON LET US RUMBLE IN THE FOG

THIS WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT AT THE CORNER STORE

RELEASED FROM THE NECESSITY OF APOLOGY

DREAM OF RISKED PHRASES IN SPACE

GOD