Jessica D. Thompson's poetry can be found in many journals and magazines, among them the Atlanta Review, Kansas City Voices, ONE ART, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Midwest Quarterly, and The Southern Review, and is forthcoming in Gyroscope Review. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including: Circe's Lament: the Anthology of Wild Women Poetry (Accents Publishing), Women Speak (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and Next Indiana Campfires: a Trail Companion (Indiana Humanities). Her full-length collection, "Daybreak and Deep," (Kelsay Books, 2022), was a finalist in the American Book Fest Best Books of 2022 for Narrative Poetry.

Books by Jessica D. Thompson:

Other poems on the web by Jessica D. Thompson:
Three poems
"Our 3-Ring Kitchen"
"Sitting with the Dead"

About Daybreak and Deep:

"Daybreak and Deep is a rich and graceful assembly of requiems, for family and home places, for a spouse. Jessica D. Thompson honors, then abandons the innocence of childhood and the prescribed gender roles imbued with religion and tradition — We wore the white of the sacrificed / tied the knot. Instead, Thompson travels the sharp-edged road of grief while wildly embracing hurt and loss: I want / to run outside, gather firewood, chop / off my hair, stain my face with the husks / of walnuts, leave my handprint on the / wall of a cave. In praise of loves lost, of crows and cowslip, of making art amid great sorrow, this poet's voice is a glowing testament to this earthbound life / in a season of frost."
—Marianne Worthington

"Jessica D. Thompson's extraordinary collection twirls and spins — a poetic sema, a deep listening — each poem a dervish, one hand receiving the blessings of attention — rose petals floating in a rain barrel; candlelight [warming] butter-crème walls,one hand bestowing the bittersweet gifts of remembrance — the symmetry of married sleep; the small hole in the front pocket of [a] late husband's 505 Levi's. ... beneath / the Big Dipper, I twirled / in long night gowns — / spinning round and round / until I ran out of breath, / until the earth caught fire / beneath my bare feet. We return from this modern-day heroine's journey, rejoicing in the blue light of May.I know I will return to this book again and again, for the pleasure of its linguistic grace and to listen to the sound of leaves / trembling — / like tambourines in trees."
—Kim Noriega

"In Daybreak and Deep,Thompson gives us a collection of poems so delicately tuned to the ecology of love and loss that the book itself is a house of prayer for all people, for all creatures, for every leaf and bloom and weed, for this heartbreak, heaven of a life."
—Rebecca Gayle Howell