Have you ever swooned over a crush who lives halfway across the world? Maybe thought your newest match on the apps just might be a catfish? Or celebrated hot vax summer for a hot second? Or felt yourself falling into…something for a short spell?
Then maybe you’ve been in a bottle episode.
Bottle Episodes (Referential Press, 2025) charts a path through obsessive gay crushes, life-affirming love, soul-crushing first dates, and a series of consuming, short-term love affairs. Redefining the force of romantic narratives through unconventional shapes and frames of time, each episode offers its own particular delight. With equal strokes of playfulness, whimsy, melodrama, and joy, the poems of this collection are as interested in referencing Girls as they are in simping, swooning, and finding a new self both inside—and out—of love.
Bottle Episodes Events
Wilmington, NC: November 9 at 2pm, UNC Wilmington Writers Week, Same River Alumni Reading Series
Brooklyn, NY: December 16 at 8pm, Singers, with Joshua Garcia and Daniel Lefferts
Portland, ME: December 19 at 7pm, Oun Lido’s Penthouse with Jaed Coffin, Coco McCracken, Charlotte Rutty, Andy Sebela, and Keziah Weir
“From New England to New Zealand, from heartbreak to ‘cosmic sway,’ from Lana Del Rey to Hall & Oates and then back to Lana (of course), this little collection is so full of life and so very gay. Michael Colbert’s writing is irresistibly witty and irreverently funny. These poems will make you wish you were a ‘hot gay witch’ if you weren’t already (why aren’t you). ”
“These are episodes I’ll rewatch, eagerly—for their richness of detail, their warmth and wit, the way they turn the volume way up on longing, every sweet moment presented as fleeting, each scene over almost before it begins. And make no mistake: I want each of these scenes—of flirting in parties and parks, of yearning in yellow rooms and rooftop bars, of strolling black-lit beach towns and crying to Lana Del Rey—to last forever. Truly, I would follow our protag-speaker (part gay witch, part stone fox, 100% enchanter) anywhere, would read a thousand of these urgent, tender, funny, sharp-eyed, and big-hearted poems. This is a delicious and dazzling debut.”
“Last night was a bottle episode…and Michael Colbert’s features gay panic, catfishing, totally consuming short-term love affairs, Girls references…need we say more?”