Poignant and tough, the poems in Jenifer DeBellis’ Blood Sisters remind us of the fierce loyalties and eroticism that fuel childhood and adolescence while at the same time celebrating the grace and resilience with which the speaker survives those conflicts. Unflinchingly honest, surprisingly tender, these poems spare neither the children themselves nor the adults who should be their protectors. The memorable language and vitality of Blood Sisters will reverberate long after you have finished this book. —Kathleen Aguero, author After That

The poems in Jenifer DeBellis’s powerful debut collection, Blood Sisters, explore the body and its journeys with an erotic accuracy and emotional complexity. “The trouble I got in for telling/the truth was worse than any trouble I ever got in for lying,” the speaker divulges. Through bold, evocative lyrical narratives, she delivers her carnal and spiritual truths—as hard-hitting as they are tender, as rebellious as they are revelatory. –Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest (Carnegie Mellon University Press)

Debellis’ poems are word vital, full of true-blood rites of passage, and laden with the womanly, sisterly, sometimes manly, and certainly family-tried wonders and mishaps that drive our lives. Her voice is rich, her imagery sharp and accessible, and her heart, right there on her sleeve in vivid and generous human color. –Anne-Marie Oomen, author of Uncoded Woman and Love, Sex and 4-H (winner of Next Generation Indie Award for Memoir)