Purgatory Junkie
poems by
Camille Newsom
~84 pages, $15 (+ shipping)
Projected Release Date: September/October 2025
An Advance Sale Discount price of $9 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $13.50/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412.
PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.
Camille Newsom (she/her) is the author of the chapbook This Suffering and Scrumptious World (Galileo Press, 2023). Based in West Michigan, Camille is an educator and land steward who weaves creative practice and curiosity into her work. Her poems have appeared in ONE ART, Terrain.org, and Southword, among others, and was nominated for Best New Poets 2025.
“Come visit.” Camille Newsom writes in her book’s title poem, “Purgatory Junkie.” And truly these poems are invitations: grounded in the real world of dogs and pigs and cute Turkish bakers. If this is “purgatory,” I want in. “There are many shapes of reality in/this suffering scrumptious world” Newsom writes. Exactly. Forget heaven and hell. Give me this purgatory which Camille Newsom evokes and invokes so powerfully and with such love. ~Jim Moore, author of Prognosis and Underground: New and Selected Poems
I have this hope that the longer I read these poems, the more I might start to resemble them: playful, perceptive, curious about the undersides of things, able to wrestled by difficult truths, insistent on love. I did not know how much I, too, wanted to be a “purgatory junkie,” a “feral cathedral,” until these poems slipped into my thoughts and crooked their long fingers, saying, This way, sweetheart. Read on. ~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path
“Most people find/the circle of life confusing,” one of these poems asserts–but not Newsom herself! In her vivid poems, the metronome “of breath and death” clicks along briskly. Whether sprinting to get cows out of the road, “kissing the ground with each step,” or burying tri-colored piglets in the compost pile, Newsom celebrates it all. It’s sheer joy to walk alongside this poet and the incomparable Dog as they suss out the world’s curiosities. ~Jane Hilberry, author of Body Painting and Still the Animals Enter
Dog and I
Ripe heat, and wilting. I feel bad for men
in black suits and tactical boots.
Yesterday we did surgery on a piglet.
I sat at the kitchen table, stacked towels
on my lap, spread a few on the floor to soak
the blood. Piggie rested in my arms, intestines
dangled down, brushing my thigh.
We tried to stuff the goobs back in,
like a sleeping bag in a stuff sack.
Oyster mushroom look, red wine color,
slippery like lube, oddly delicious. I describe
animal ailments with food adjectives.
Juicy vulva on a heifer who will soon give birth,
meaty brain-balls of Mr. Boar, crusty
foamy teats milked by a new calf. It’s odd
to return to the dark city after prying open
an abdominal sphincter on a spotted three-week old pig
who in nine months will occupy the door of my freezer
in the form of brat-patties and bacon.
And now, I walk the dog as if nothing important ever happens.
I pray his intestines don’t drag on cement
as we pass the man viciously sweating in his suit.
I know it’s time to turn home by the distance
between Dog’s tongue and the sidewalk:
a foot and we’re okay to keep chugging,
a few inches and he’s ready for an ice cube and a nap.
His limp is still there, but the CBD store
is permanently closed according to Google Maps
and I can’t order more shit online. 100 degrees today.
Tomorrow, 103.
All the Kiddos Say ‘Me Too!’
In the corner a child designs a fantasy game about unity,
pencils characters on paper towels,
imagines routes and rewards and the user experience.
The hospital requires me to label this: distracted.
Next to him, the silent child.
Then, the child who loves all things cash money,
who introduces himself as “Price,”
the teen girl who says “I’ve learned this a million times,
every hospital I’ve been to…sooo boring.”
She proceeds to take notes for the entire therapy hour.
One kid points out the races and genitalia of everyone in the room.
Another sleeps in the red leather chair.
One shares, “I am someone who everyone hates,”
and all the kiddos say “me too!”
Another says “I am someone who tried to die,”
and all the kiddos say “me too!”
Omaha
Next time you spread your mind out on I-80,
stop for a night and soak in comfort.
An overcast sky slips through the window,
caressing the walls of your king-size-bed room.
Despair creeps through the bathroom door,
constructing a home between the lukewarm bath water
and your pruned toes. For one lonesome night
you’ll ferment among fan filters that smell funny
and floppy pillows that fit right under the neck of the Midwest.
As you anxiously run your fingers through
the conditioner caked to your head, you’ll recline
into bed realizing you have room
for all your ex-lovers beside you.
In the minute between 2:02 and 2:03AM
you’ll notice the hallway’s fluorescence.
The couple next door has gone
from making love to fucking and back to making love.
The ice is melting now. Adam and Eve are dreaming
in the drawer beside you. The hum of the heater,
the leaky faucet, twenty-two sheep, twenty-three.
