“In Goldilocks at Fifty, Ashley Oakes dazzles the inevitable disjunctures of midlife with memory, not as narrative or memoir but as metaphor, finding humor at the boundary between disappointment and absurdity. Her tool, the double-edged sword of language, capturing with exquisite ingenuity both contemporary idiom and the register of an educated reader. With no whiff of sentimentality, her poems pulse with mother as a unifying theme, both the biological one and mother earth. I will never look at fireworks, a car wash, Velcro, or a refrigerator the same away again.”
-Margaret Lee, author of Sappho Prompts
Ashley Oakes has published poems in numerous journals and magazines. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 11th Street, the original U.S. Route 66 that was once the province of honeymooners, bootleggers and other dreamers.
Goldilocks at Fifty by Ashley Oakes
Preorder link – will ship in November of 2026! USA orders only!
$12.00
