Forthcoming in July of 2026 from Serotonin Press, If I Cannot Fly by Amy Saul-Zerby is her fourth poetry collection.
Click this link to pre-order your copy.
Cover art coming soon…
“Reading Amy Saul-Zerby’s If I Cannot Fly feels like lighting a firecracker in your hand and holding it a second longer than you should before throwing it. The poems are exciting, risky, and driven by an indomitable survival instinct. It’s how I like my poetry, I mean psychology, I mean philosophy. Like an urgent telegram reporting news from the self, Saul-Zerby writes, I want my entire life. I love this line and how each word becomes more important than the one before it. These poems deftly question fate and choice, heredity and identity. If I Cannot Fly is moving, smart, and sparkling, and it scorched me again and again.”
– Sommer Browning, author of Good Actors
“Amy Saul-Zerby’s latest collection, If I Cannot Fly, is both frank and philosophical, humorous and humble; she meets embodiment with curiosity and reflection, and an expertise in the craft of repetition, turning a situation or phrase over, like lifting a rock to find a new small creature each time. Her wry curiosity is heartbreaking and exhilarating, especially when examining her own evolution: “Because I was raised without a god I always thought / I couldn’t pray, but now I think maybe I’ve just / never been good at asking for what I need.” Who hasn’t felt the same tension with asserting their own self-worth? Saul-Zerby’s voice is at once both hopeful & meditative, and ultimately redemptive: “what we are building, // is absolutely, eminently, extremely worth having.” If I Cannot Fly is a testament to living; this is a necessary collection, especially in our current time.”
– Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love, queer feast,
sweet euphemism, It Skips a Generation, METAMOURPHOSIS, The Other Tree, and American Kintsugi
“Split between the rough exterior world and the tender flesh of the interior, Saul-Zerby’s If I Cannot Fly offers us snapshots of a witnessed life couched in a stunning level of vulnerability. Earnest, evocative, and ever-present, after each poem I am left “not haunted but I feel like I could be if I tried harder”.
– I.S. Jones, Author of Bloodmercy and Spells of My Name