Poetry chapbook, Frog Hollow Press, 2019

Death Is a Side-Effect is about intimacy, loss, and the complicated ways people try to move forward after love changes or disappears.

Many of the poems explore romantic relationships and their aftermath, often with a voice that shifts between humor and vulnerability. Others turn toward larger questions about family, memory, and mortality. In the title poem, the speaker reflects on the final days of a loved one and the strange, ordinary moments that surround death — hospital rooms, vending machines, and the quiet rituals of saying goodbye.

Across the chapbook, everyday settings — bars, apartments, city streets — become spaces where grief, desire, and self-reflection unfold. Some poems approach these experiences with irony or satire, while others move toward a quieter, more reflective tone.

Taken together, the poems consider how people make sense of loss, aging, and intimacy, and how humor and observation can sometimes coexist with grief.