Natural Wine

Jo Barchi

'To say that Jo Barchi’s Natural Wine is one of the horniest books ever written about going to work would be an understatement. The more I lived with these poems—their intelligence, wit and music—the more I savored the grim underbelly of the scene proffered by their coy, outrageous, brilliant server.' – Brandon Brown

'In Natural Wine, Jo Barchi takes the unnatural language that occupies the worker's ears and mouths and spits it back out. In this poem, a voice carries across a restaurant, drowning out the bad tippers, the menus recited by heart, the kitchen jargon, and other profitable falsehoods to insist, stubborn and sore-footed, on desire.' –Rainer Diana Hamilton

'Jo Barchi has written a breathless, feverish, "hysterical materialist" satire from their final boss fight at level whatever of the service industry. The drop from the boss? A "new ugliest sentence yet." Natural Wine arranges its crop of pithy one-liners and damning overheards into a masterfully hideous collage worthy of Holly Woodlawn's manic brilliance. Everybody's losing this game, but you sure as hell know who to root for.' – Kay Gabriel