John Thomas Menesini

"Gloom Hearts & Opioids is a collection full of gritty rusted charm."

-Beach Sloth (author of It Doesn't Matter What You Look Like On The Outside It's What's On The Internet That Counts)

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"John Thomas Menesini's Gloom Hearts & Opioids is a collection of "screwed blue feathers" dripping black blood and cold glass shards of impending death. Oily dirty displays of trailer park viscera, "ice/ stacks & / mounds of /frozen skulls", headless bodies dying under snow until they rot, and get ripped apart and chewed up by carrion eaters and poet creatures. Pittsburgh winters in which "icicles hang / from the wash / lines" and an offering of "dead baby bird /broken down by/ scavenging mouths/ on the sidewalk" and other small but meaningful memorials mourning the half-broken spots and celebrating the never-ending intersections of life and death coalesced forever."

-Juliet Cook (author of Horrific Confection)

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“Most poets put their heart into their work, but very few put their whole body into it. Johnny does, and you can sure as shit see that. It’s an accomplishment.”

-Joseph Flatley (The Conspiracy Review)

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"Menesini has the ability to zero in on the precise qualities of a given moment with the heart-stopping accuracy of a Zen master. With his remarkable talent for le mot juste, he is able to find solace in the burning breast of a menthol cigarette, or the grace in a desiccated turd."

-Jason Price Everett (author of Hypodrome)

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"Menesini’s paranoid, scathing, cynical ramblings would unnerve the most stable of souls, yet somehow his most depressed and depraved observations still manage to retain an air of wisdom."

-Adam Reece (Galway Advertiser)