Bubble Gum Stadium

With clarity of attention and such a supple ease, Jalen Eutsey’s poems conjure home and its generations. Here we are in that lush reverberation of Black aliveness out of which he emerges and which he so stunningly attends. Exact, ruminative, skillful. Bubble Gum Stadium is a slim and gorgeous glimpse of Eutsey’s exquisite, singular sound. – aracelis girmay, the black maria

A home is made by the memories it holds, and in Bubble Gum Stadium, Jalen Eutsey makes us his house guests. Flush with the rich colors of South Florida, these poems immerse you in a history of a place and its people. Bubble Gum Stadium grips the reader with its immersive recollections and starkly beautiful language. We’re given a scrapbook black community and coming-of age, so lovingly rendered in the backdrop of West Perrine. Memory offered as a gift, one Eutsey asks us to treasure; after all, what happens when it’s gone?