[05/26/26] Norman, Kevin T.: The Apple of Their Throat

Central Avenue Poetry, paperback

Publication Date: May 26, 2026

Publisher Marketing: The Apple of Their Throat is a love story, and a testament to the quiet, defiant resilience it takes to build a life when the world says you don't belong.

This is an intimate and unflinching journey through self-discovery, first love, heartbreak, and the faith we lose and find on the way to becoming. Told in three powerful movements--Pollination, Fertilization, and Ripening--this memoir-in-verse begins with the breathless urgency of early desire and the ache of wanting to be chosen: by God, by family, by love. It weaves through grief, guilt, and rupture, arriving at a reclamation of self that is healed, scarred, and still tender. It is both a prayer and a battle cry, laying bare emotions in all their contradiction--divine, flawed, and achingly real.

With language that is both accessible and precise, these poems capture the ache of longing, the quiet fractures of faith, and the fragile bloom of first love. This is a collection that interrogates religion, asking what holiness looks like for those cast out and it pulses with honesty, restraint, and the kind of intimacy that feels like being handed a secret.