““I blow up bridges” is one of my favorite sentences in Kelly Clayton’s mother of chaos, queen of the nines.  The surprise and ferocity of such a sentence best characterizes this book’s chronicling and claiming of womanhood, of region, of motherhood, of spells: “Heat up some wasp mites in the bread oven, and pound into powder.”  These poems salute the power of resistance every time the speaker calls where she stands her rightful home: “Let one of us call another and drop a bomblet. By the time/we hang up, throw a load of whites in the wash, phone lines start/smoking.””

— Jericho Brown, PhD. Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for The Tradition

Clayton’s use of language is transcendent. Each poem explores Louisiana with such sensuality it leaves you with a brand new awe of the everyday sacred.  mother of chaos is what the world needs right now. It’s an explosion of imagination, beautifully crafted images, and pocket universes. Damn fine writing.”

— Thomas Parrie, Author of Toledo Rez & Other Myths. Professor of Creative Writing, Southeastern Louisiana University

"In mother of chaos, queen of nines, Kelly Clayton is a magnetic and assertive poet as much as she is a seamstress who weaves and laces her words with the gift of her spirituality and the beauty that is Louisiana. Here in this collection, the divine mingles with the mundane, the cooking and its scents elucidate intimacy,  and the experiences of womanhood are found along a dizzying path of love, loss, and most of all--lessons. This book is full of so much texture and sound---a musicality that can only be achieved when one is at home in herself, her culture, and her ancestors."

— Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America