~ Yalie Saweda Kamara, author of Besaydoo

"Ajanaé Dawkins's Blood-Flex is both lyrical and unabashed in its meditation on matrilineality, the bridge between girlhood and womanhood, the body, and the literal and psychic dimensions of sororal connection. The richness of Dawkins's poems is a testament to her ability to render stories by becoming them: watch Dawkins transmute from child to witness to ethnographer to elder to archivist to visual artist to cartographer. A devotee to truth and its attendant inconveniences, surprises, and delights, Dawkins gathers blood--she teaches us how to hold this red water like a garnet or a ruby and from its gorgeous and terrifying light, implores us to excavate rememory and then, dares us to world make. Her artistry shows us how writing that leads with bravery and tenacious curiosity will always, at its nucleus, be a project of love."

~ Remica Bingham-Risher, author of Room Swept Home

"In Ajanaé Dawkins’ Blood-Flex, the poet reminds us that re-discovering love is revolutionary. Here, there are many mothers, many openings. Invention is everywhere: a photo collage as poem, erasure and haunting, hem and homage, in and out of frame. Dawkins’ dazzles creating words as double entendres, compounding meaning and threading blood into almost everything, letting no one—ghost-kin or newly born—forget. We are all anchored. Our mothers hold the documented pieces of us; the daughters we might bear could come to tell the truth and let God love you. Words are a blade and dividing line—maybe savior, maybe wayward, then prodigal. The body is someone else’s creation but the poet says we are here to worry it, wield it, wear ourselves out. Love does this. Love is a blood-ex. Love is taking whatever we’ve fallen heir to and making it new."

~ Danez Smith, author of Bluff

"What a rich text, a true wealth for the soul of all who come here and witness this complicated and stunningly told testimony! What a golden gift to the archives of womanhood! Dawkins’s Blood-Flex is a chapbook with the
heft and vision of skilled poet several books deep. Reading this will make you impatient for all the works to come from this visionary, this truth-teller. If the truth can do anything but be sought and told, then I’m certain that the truth loves Dawkins for how she gets to it. With great humility, the poet asks in the author’s note, 'What new could I say about something damn near old as God? What could I truly imagine that hadn’t been felt before?' but I am here to say that nobody can imagine into the realm of mother’s and daughters the way this poet has. It is her humility, her ripe, pungent heart that makes the genius so sweet here. It is the empathy, the epiphany, the electric lyric and questioning that makes this work so special. We are blessed that Dawkins made this for us to share. With each line and each poem I feel lives changing, I hear louder and louder the sound of a world where mothers can be women and girls can be safe rushing towards us. Read this book, then listen to the wind."

~ Ashley M. Jones, author of Reparations Now!

"More than blood is passed from mother to child. In Blood-Flex, that inheritance is illuminated and complicated. These poems are fresh and uninhibited in their truth-telling, liberated in their use of language. This is an impressive, insightful book."

Winner Of The 13th Annual New Delta Review Chapbook Contest
Selected By Ashley M. Jones

$14.00

Ajanaé Dawkins ✳ 2025

Blood-Flex

5.5″ x 7″