sleeping in denim

It’s hard to be serious. It’s even harder to be funny. The unprecious poems collected in Corey Qureshi’s loose and lanky sleeping in denim variously toe the line, take the piss, see themselves, hate themselves, take it back, say again, become their own butt, get back on the horse. Fueled by observational intensity, painful self-awareness, and absolute mastery of the joke-not-joke, Qureshi’s lineated bullshit detectors remind us that art which risks nothing risks being nothing, and usually is. It’s just poetry, after all. sleeping in denim peeks over the rim of the bathtub to look bleary-eyed on the world of letters and labor and says exactly what it sees, typos and all, proving trash talk is a public utility. Someone’s gotta take out the garbage. But don’t expect scene reports, coded whispers, petty gossip. Even at their wryest, meanest, and most despondent, Qureshi’s social poetics can’t hide their core of authentic care and true love of the game, glancing the upper registers of high fuck-up devotional. They mean every word. It’s just that “it’s hard living hard but / harder to live softly.”

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Corey Qureshi is a writer based in Philadelphia. His poetry, fiction, and arts journalism has been widely published in print and digital form. He runs the reading series/website BOXX Press. He works as a baker and lives with his wife and children.