Selected Poems

mercury firs // “Being Partial Air” + “Clairaudience” + “I Wanted the Air Between Music” (forthcoming)

NOIR SAUNA // “Proximity” + “To Be Drawn” (forthcoming)

FENCE // “Full moon, waning” (2025)

b l u s h // “April” + “I Came Back Dark From My Wildlife” (2025)

Overheard // “Cyanotype with linoleum block print” (2024)

the tiny // “Jewelweed” + “If a Lasso” + “[blue lichen, blue moth]” (2023)

Essays

Acknowledgements

"I kept returning to these poems for their precision, their strange serenity, and the way they hold contradiction without flinching. 'I respected the process, to be defined by what / we refuse,' one line concedes, locating radical desire where it’s least expected: 'the idea of wanting / nothing by wanting everything.' In their insistence on holding—and being held by—language even as it fractures, these poems reach toward a common future, no matter how tenuous or slight. 'Eventually my small ship reaches you.'"–-Stephanie Young, on selecting J.V. for the 2025 Daniel & Merrily Glosband Fellowship in Poetry

"Physical, metaphysical, patient, and planetary, this poem steps 'cinematically into the idea of wanting.' I appreciate its generous thinking, in both its knowing and its uncertainty."–-Jon Ruseski, on nominating J.V. for the 2025 Best New Poets Anthology

"The reader cannot help being swept by the imagery and skillful, high-wire acts of these poems. There’s an unmistakable attentiveness to the din of this world as well, and such writing communes with the rhythms of what is acknowledged and what is not, with the 'cadence of a rhyme between objects' and the 'unnatural silence of a common field.' In times like these, these poems lift us from the darkness and into a light made possible through vulnerability, connection, and—dare we say it!—love."–-Michael Robins, on selecting J.V. as runner-up for the 2025 Academy of American Poets Prize

"These poems are unabashed about their beauty and are quietly expert in their craft. Conviction blossoms into imagery's spell. The reader is cared for here." –-Katherine Indermaur, on selecting J.V. for the 2024 Skolfield Goeckel Award