ABOUT THIS BOOK

Winner of the 2026 Cave Canem Angela Jackson Prize

The second collection from acclaimed poet Michal “MJ” Jones, of blue & bone reckons with the Hart family murder-suicide. On March 26, 2018, white wives Jen and Sarah Hart drove themselves and their six adopted Black children—Markis, Hannah, Devonte, Jeremiah, Abigail, and Ciera Rose—off a cliff in Mendocino County, California. Before this tragedy and while the families of origin battled to keep their children, the Harts evaded culpability for over a decade of child abuse, protected under the guise of innocence and privilege. A collection of documentary poetics, of blue & bone engages persona, ode, and lyrical poetry to reflect on the question How could this have happened? Jones carefully studies the nuances and intersections of race, queerness, and class crucial to this question, employing delicate and powerful language to explore a devastating tragedy and attempt to make sense out of monstrous devastation. Vulnerable and raw, this collection cuts deeply through blue and bone.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

MICHAL 'MJ' JONES is a poet, parent, and literary editor in Oakland, California. Their debut collection, Hood Vacations, won the 2024 Lambda Literary Award. They are also the author of the chapbook Soft Armor. A finalist of the National Poetry Series, Jones has received fellowships from the Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) Foundation, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

REVIEWS

“This book is full of surprises and rich with humanity. of blue bone will break your heart and open it.” —Angela Jackson, fifth Illinois Poet Laureate

“Michal ‘MJ’ Jones’s of blue bone is harrowing and honest. In an era where facts are undone to avoid truth, Jones, at risk to their own psyche, utilizes imagination to vivify six children whose lives went unseen. ofblue bone won’t allow such erasure, connecting personal history and American history in a way so real it will make you gasp. Jones writes, ‘To call it a crash is a silence,’ and they are right, this event was no crash, it was the intersection of both personal history and an American history that cannot be repaired but must be redressed. Histories that repeat in tragic variegation. It takes extraordinary skill as well as courage to write such a book. Jones has dared to raise their voice to raise these children, in language so arresting we too must be courageous enough to face what has been lost, now lifted from the waves.” —Vievee Francis, author of The Shared World

“Markis. Jeremiah. Devonte. Ciara Rose. Abigail. Hannah. Michal “MJ” Jones’ of blue bone is a smoldering memorial to six Black children who were adopted and murdered by two women whose whiteness shielded them from suspicion until it was too late. Their story haunts this disturbing, churning pyre of poems in search of the love, restitution and solace they were denied before their short lives were taken in 2018. This excavation into the monstrous and unspeakable maw bristles and claws its way toward a language of witness and resolve.” —Tyehimba Jess, Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and author of Olio

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Free Fall

of blue & bone

Children’s Chorus Between the Ocean & Goodbye

Rattle

Shining

One-Sided Interview with Devonte in Heaven

Back Pocket Prayerbook

Bluff No. 1

The Magic Your Body Becomes

Coroner’s Report 1

Coroner’s Report 2

One-Sided Interview with Sarah Hart in Hell

Let Me Be Remembered as a Mother

“Sorry, I Didn’t See Any Red Flags”

The Two White Women Hosts of the Broken Harts Podcast Question Whether Jen & Sarah Hart Were “Monsters”

This One Thing

Ballad

Into the Photograph

Polaroid

What the Poet Keeps in Their Toolbelt to Write These Poems, or “Spellwork”

Such a Little Thing

This Doggone Funny Kid

Bluff No. 4

Ciera Rose, Age 12, and the Sleep Paralysis

Analog Clock Account No. 2–Woodland, Washington

Rhymes with Bravery

Shards

Ciera Rose, Age 12, Recurring Dream

Hannah, Age 13, Writes of a Secret Garden

Bluff No. 2

Harvest

Black Body 1

Black Auntie Speaks

Jeremiah, Age 12, at the Festival

My String Bean

Analog Clock Account No. 1–Woodland, WA

Bluff No. 3

After the Photograph

How Many Things Are Wrong with This Picture?

Markis, Age 13, Writes of Home for Language Arts

I Hope It Didn’t Hurt None

Abigail, Age 7

On Lineage

What I Got Left With

Monologue: Social Worker

A Letter for Markis on His Would-Be 20th

Eldest

Children’s Chorus Between the Ocean & Goodbye

A Somewhere There

One-Sided Interview with the Poet at Home

Afterword

Notes

Acknowledgments