Jump the Gun

jump the gun digs deep into the dark undercurrents of grief and gun violence that shadow our daily lives in America. These poems uproot the hidden
recesses of life, the stages and struggles of womanhood, and our continual fight against violence, both internal and external, in the U.S. today.

The speaker in these
poems wrestles with the everyday fears and realities we often try to ignore:
the complex expectations
placed on young girls and mothers alike, the illusion of childhood innocence,
and the very real
consequences of our environmental destruction.

Split into two
sections--with poems that layer blood-soaked images between close-ups of the
body and domestic life--this collection deftly illustrates the beauty that can be
found in tragedy, the
fragility of the natural world, and the resilience of the human relationships
that fill it.

To read jump the gun
is to witness yourself through the crosshairs. In Malboeuf’s words, ＂What hit you has become you. /
Pieces of the bullet embedded / in your skin. Even / that which you come from / will never be the
same. / But from violence comes / the tides, the seasons.＂

Jennie
Malboeuf is the
author of jump the gun, forthcoming
from (BOA Editions, 2025), and God had a
body, awarded the 2019 Blue Light Books Prize by Adrian Matejka (Indiana UP
and the Indiana Review, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, The Gettysburg Review, Virginia Quarterly
Review, The Southern Review, and Harvard
Review. Born and raised in Kentucky, she received a BA at Centre College
and an MFA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is the
recipient of a 2020 NC Arts Council Fellowship. She lives in Kentucky with her
husband, son, and dog.