Raised Ranch by Lauren Singer
Lauren Singer is the longtime first-round judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. We're pleased to announce her debut poetry collection, Raised Ranch, goes on sale on April 29, 2025. Published by Game Over Books, Raised Ranch takes the reader room by room in a house overrun with the detritus left behind by pregnancy loss, divorce, the confrontation of childhood trauma, and the clumsy attempts one makes while putting life back together.
Raised Ranch is the house that grief built. These painfully funny and open-hearted poems attest to a time when we were forced to shelter in place with our shadows. Trailed by the ghosts of a ripped-apart marriage and a stillborn child, the speaker moves through the showplace of perfection that no real woman can live up to, and wonders how it's possible to fail at adulthood when she never had a childhood. Maybe one day, she'll permit herself to have as healthy a relationship as her cat has with the mailman. Until then, there's the animal self-love of "porridge where all the raisins spell out 'mercy'". You'll cry till you laugh, and cry again, wanting to hold this character (and yourself) with a little more tenderness before you walk out the door.
—Jendi Reiter, author of Made Man and Origin Story, editor of Winning Writers
