Resisting the conventional narratives of care and cure, Tiana Reid’s Nightnursing is a frenetic diary about sobriety and what recovery really means in a world where the innate need for “better” is both trauma and treatment. The poems in this nuanced collection delve into the terrible beauty of unbaked work, critical practice, and state-sanctioned care.

Nightnursing simultaneously runs toward and away from reality, grappling with the gravity of memory, of remembering, of a “mind constantly rewriting what happened.” The poems of this collection are experimental and playful in their depth as they drift through the haze of time, pressing fists to the boundaries of language and the self.