I'm glad that I listened to the audiobook of Jones's memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, last year, because it was good to have his voice and some biographical knowledge in my head as I read Prelude to Bruise. The poems here are so closely aligned with what I value in poetry that I couldn't help but love them, each one like a small, sharp jewel of the most vivid hue and satisfying cut: careful and unpretentious language, vivid imagery, and unapologetic queerness and Blackness. I could smell the flowers in these poems, feel water on my feet, hear the impact of flesh on flesh. Highly recommended.