u know how much i hate being alone in social situations//

Author: stephon lawrence

Publisher: Futurepoem (2023)

Whenever I encounter Stephon Lawrence's work, I know I am in for a vibrant active display of play with the written word. Lawrence not only delights in this play but offers you a piece of taffy to join in the sweetness of her poetics. Lawrence's u know... hisses words like "błœ błø dizz zst" after grand events in the woods, in the everyday and a8ing trash late. Will our nervous system know relief after what otherworldly truth she has illuminated for us? Lawrence's debut book coats the stomach lining, builds resolve to embrace the weird and screw the poetics. Lawrence asks in script, "". Heed her message, it may be the last luxury you can afford. 
—Jasmine Gibson 

The poem's in Lawrence's debut are both ethereal and unyielding. This book presents an unvarnished take on intimacy in the contemporary world in all of its disjointed glory. 
—Diamond Sharp

Lawrence writes, "I should've made this metal body out of steel or something opalescent," and then, "...everything is so heavy." u know... illuminates a frictive space made of heavy (and multiplicitous) bodies, absorption, emanation, so much looking, and being looked upon. Lawrence's debut collection builds a body of its own, incisively, one visceral layer after another, texturized by sharp-witted returns of mundane and dangerous gazes. This work dares even the slightest provocation, unwavering in its nearly omniscient awareness of all that surrounds it, and promises its sharpest teeth for any who refuse to see. 
—Sasha Banks