"Pecking Order awakens in me a desire to remember fear at its most immense: when it spills from our desire to keep close those we love, even as they grow out from us and into danger. Yes, it is a stunning portrayal of where the interior of motherhood and the nuance of race intersect. But, more than anything, Homer is a poet of sharp articulation of fear, love, and the small hums of comfort in between. More than simply poems, Pecking Order is also about the exhausting journey of being seen, black and in public. In grocery stores, on vacation, in rooms not your own. This is a stellar collection, one that speaks to every edge of an experience and echoes out, leaving a harsh and beautiful longing in its wake. "
- Hanif WillisAbdurraqib, author of The Crown Ain't Worth Much
"There are many ways to mother a revolution; Nicole Homer is a shining example. Homer demystifies the totem of mammy, doting nana and childless woman in the unhinging collection Pecking Order. Whether investigating blackness, femininity or loss, Homer's poems sever the reader's sensibilities teetering dangerously between love, frenetic self-(re)-discovery and comedic cynicism. These poems serve as a legend for how to raise human beings, when learning how to hold tightly your own woman frame. The excavation process causes both grimace & joy as each page unfolds and gifts the reader with sounds of children laughing, a new mother worrying, or the firm grandmother advising: 'the sweetest plum is the one on the verge of rot.' Nicole Homer is our Matron Saint of 'Mothers Bring Your Weary Self & Get Free or Laugh 'til You Cry' - and she didn't even apply for the gig."
- Mahogany L. Browne, author of Redbone (NAACP Nominee 2015)
"The poems in Pecking Order are electric with interrogation and revelation. Here, Nicole Homer navigates the cost & demands of domesticity and Black American motherhood with a fanged precision. What I love most about these poems is how incisive Homer's voice is, even at her most sardonic - she always lets vulnerability take center stage, confronting race and motherhood with equal parts ferocity and introspection."
- Rachel McKibbens, author of Pink Elephant
