For more than a decade, I have been a supermarket cashier, seeing customers for five minutes at a time as they pass through my line. At best, they are polite to me; at worst, they look right through me or take out their frustrations on me. And, in return, I have lost faith in humanity, and compassion for them. I wrote these poems to try to regain that compassion ― to find a way to think about them as individuals with troubles of their own. "Mild-mannered grocery store employee by day, Nina Robins is a well-known performance poet who has twice performed at the National Poetry Slam. Her poetry has been described as 'exceptionally appealing,' 'heartbreakingly honest,' and 'subversively deep for work so overtly entertaining.' - Taylor Mali, author of "What Teachers Make"

Supermarket Diaries

Literature & Fiction

Robins, Nina Belén

Poetry

Thompson & Columbus, Incorporated

This book of poems draws on the author's experience within the mental health system from the time she was a little girl until she reached her early twenties. The poems illuminate the soul-numbing degradations that spurred her to find her way out of the system and the kindnesses that made it possible. Each poem provides a clue to her survival: from the drug addict who told her never to follow his path, to the staff member who sat up with her every night, to the YWCA that provided her first safe harbor. Taken together, the poems also reveal the resilience and the dauntless sense of humor that allowed her to heal and triumph. One dollar will be donated from every sale of the book to the YWCA of White Plains.

A Bed With My Name On It

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Renowned performance poet and survivor of fierce mental health battles Nina Belén Robins takes a long, hard look at the idea of bearing and nurturing children, and decides to remain child-free.
 Every step of her decision is fraught with pain. Fighting off the powerful internal pressures, the madness that can seize a woman in her fertile years, battling the forceful external pressures -- the boyfriends who envision her as a vessel for passing on their genes, the boyfriends' mothers who consider grandchildren to be their rightful due.
 She pleads with the doctors who insist she doesn't know what she knows, who refuse to perform the procedure that will free her from the terrors of unwanted and untenable conception. 
 She is forced to endure the onslaught of thought-free comments by friends and colleagues. The unwavering pressure of therapists and mentors who assure her that motherhood will transform her, their claims that her childhood anguish and explosions were aberrations, that her children will not repeat her history or bear her scars, that her temper and limitations will somehow disappear with the birth of her children.
 In 27 ferociously-honest, startlingly-witty and brilliantly-concise poems, Robins demonstrates the sensitivity that drives her to protect her unborn children, the love that she lavishes on the man who marries her for herself, the cats who delight her by day and comfort her by night, and the attention she pays to us, her readers -- the lucky recipients of her poetic gifts.

T. Gondii

Warm Blooded Tree

Parenting & Relationships

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Books by Thompson & Columbus, Incorporated