Listen. When you have a daughter,
you’ll understand how to burn
your body to keep her warm. How
to burn her body to keep her
close.
- Aubade
Gu draws on the body, the landscape, and the four walls domestic in her circumvolution of matrilineal spoor. Daughters should be softer, be smaller, be grateful. Mothers are memory forged without kind. This tension between generations, of deferred expectation, permeates the collection. Jump Cut is a leap with a tow line, the grasp of a talon on ankle mid fledge. "girl sits with girl," Gu tells us in 'summering'. "girl tells girl a secret," and still the mother is with us. And yet Gu tries again and again at a leaving, "I am always yearning for something else."
Jump Cut is also available in PRINT
In Jump Cut, Gu transforms the objective physicality of bodies and their surrounding worlds into near-magical and visceral description. These poems trace between the kitchen table and myth, leaving the reader wholly immersed. “There are yesterdays / but no tomorrows, there is: my cerebrum in your mouth, / skin lining your stomach like an overcoat,” she writes, rhythm brought forth like a heartbeat. Each beginning in this chapbook is a gateway to resonance, each ending written so skillfully it inhales as if alive.
No matter the poem, Gu writes a world for anyone who has ever wanted to split a mirror and scream soundlessly, for those who crave beauty and cutting emotion in the gracious abundance she offers. No line of Jump Cut will disappoint–instead, each will open up the parts of your heart you did not know existed.
Ivi Hua,
author of Body, DissectedIn this vivid yet delicate debut, Helen Gu deftly traverses the themes of girlhood into womanhood, the complexity of matrilineal relationships, and the tension between embodiment and culture. An exploration of various poetic forms and intensely visceral imagery, Jump Cut is a must-read.
Allison Thung,
author of Reacquaint, Molar,
and Things I can only say in poems about/to an unspecified ‘you’In Jump Cut, Helen Gu finds herself in proximity with memory. Framing each poem as a snapshot, Gu explores the definition of vulnerability: life before her existence, how the skin “mottles with guilty verdicts, almost small enough to forget”; transformative rage.
These are poems, anatomy, drenched in the somatic. Gu asks the reader to explore the corners of motherhood, of mythology, of “a stomach pallid as a rotting lotus.” Jump Cut doesn't want to be read in one sitting—it prompts the reader to examine, to question, come back to it over and over; to infinitely rebirth.
Jaiden Geolingo,
author of How to Migrate GhostsRelease Date: June 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-12-5
32 pages
Listen. When you have a daughter,
you’ll understand how to burn
your body to keep her warm. How
to burn her body to keep her
close.
- Aubade
Gu draws on the body, the landscape, and the four walls domestic in her circumvolution of matrilineal spoor. Daughters should be softer, be smaller, be grateful. Mothers are memory forged without kind. This tension between generations, of deferred expectation, permeates the collection. Jump Cut is a leap with a tow line, the grasp of a talon on ankle mid fledge. "girl sits with girl," Gu tells us in 'summering'. "girl tells girl a secret," and still the mother is with us. And yet Gu tries again and again at a leaving, "I am always yearning for something else."
Jump Cut is also available in PRINT
In Jump Cut, Gu transforms the objective physicality of bodies and their surrounding worlds into near-magical and visceral description. These poems trace between the kitchen table and myth, leaving the reader wholly immersed. “There are yesterdays / but no tomorrows, there is: my cerebrum in your mouth, / skin lining your stomach like an overcoat,” she writes, rhythm brought forth like a heartbeat. Each beginning in this chapbook is a gateway to resonance, each ending written so skillfully it inhales as if alive.
No matter the poem, Gu writes a world for anyone who has ever wanted to split a mirror and scream soundlessly, for those who crave beauty and cutting emotion in the gracious abundance she offers. No line of Jump Cut will disappoint–instead, each will open up the parts of your heart you did not know existed.
Ivi Hua,
author of Body, DissectedIn this vivid yet delicate debut, Helen Gu deftly traverses the themes of girlhood into womanhood, the complexity of matrilineal relationships, and the tension between embodiment and culture. An exploration of various poetic forms and intensely visceral imagery, Jump Cut is a must-read.
Allison Thung,
author of Reacquaint, Molar,
and Things I can only say in poems about/to an unspecified ‘you’In Jump Cut, Helen Gu finds herself in proximity with memory. Framing each poem as a snapshot, Gu explores the definition of vulnerability: life before her existence, how the skin “mottles with guilty verdicts, almost small enough to forget”; transformative rage.
These are poems, anatomy, drenched in the somatic. Gu asks the reader to explore the corners of motherhood, of mythology, of “a stomach pallid as a rotting lotus.” Jump Cut doesn't want to be read in one sitting—it prompts the reader to examine, to question, come back to it over and over; to infinitely rebirth.
Jaiden Geolingo,
author of How to Migrate GhostsRelease Date: June 25, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-12-5
32 pages
