Glitter Road

“My poems brought me to Oxford, Mississippi, a.k.a. the velvet ditch: / a place you can fall into, get comfortable among confederate rebels” writes O’Neil in her bold new collection. Glitter Road looks back at the end of a marriage, loss, and a new relationship against the backdrop of a Mississippi season. She explores the history and legacy of Emmett Till, how his story is braided with hers, and how race binds us all together. These poems reclaim the vulnerable, intimate parts of a life in transition, and celebrates womanhood through awakenings, landscapes, meanders, and possibilities. She declares, “I am done telling the kinder story. I am a myth of my own making.”