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Birds of Thunder
Jessica D. Thompson
Accents Publishing is proud to present Birds of Thunder by Jessica D. Thompson, a collection of poems about survival, transformation, and the hard-won freedom of becoming fully oneself. Moving through girlhood and womanhood, violence and grief, love and loss, Thompson turns again and again to the natural world—birds, rivers, trees, light—as a source of wisdom, refuge, and renewal. Fierce yet tender, Birds of Thunder is ultimately a book about finding one's voice and discovering, after all that has been endured, the courage to rise.
What Others Say About Birds of Thunder
Women populate the pages of Jessica D. Thompson's Birds of Thunder—hurt women, lost women, brave women, and one woman, the poet herself, with the strength and compassion to hold them all, along with frost flowers, sycamores, a kettle of vultures, and "ghost horses with red manes." Birds of Thunder picks you up by the scruff of the neck and will not let go.
—Pauletta Hansel, Cincinnati Poet Laureate emerita;
author of Understory: A Women's History of Appalachia
Jessica D. Thompson's Birds of Thunder emerges from the shadows of domestic violence into the sanctuary of a woman discovering her agency. "Summon the crown fashioned from clover," urges the speaker on this lyrical journey of insight, rendered with tenderness and precision. This poet conjures both the darkness of human nature, "… that which stirs beneath / the blunt blade of a shovel," and the spirit of resilience, "… her heart ablaze, her laughter a bonfire." Thompson is a poet of witness, one who sees transcendence in soaring vultures, carnival glass, prayer wheels, and a woman's strength. Like the night heron, "we dive into the sea-tangled wrack weed, / searching for something lost." With this poet as a guide, we willingly search.
—Ellen Austin-Li, author of Incidental Pollen, runner-up to Madville Publishing's Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
The poems in Birds of Thunder paint the ancient danger of being a girl and a woman, and the recipient of men's desires and angers. They paint loss and grief, recalibrating and starting over. They paint love. Full of intricate images and specificity, the poems connect us to the intersection where human, natural, and divine influence each other, and where time seems a closed book with the past, present, and future all singing at the same time.
—Melissa Jørgenrud Helton, author of A Middle-Aged Woman Rages
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[Because She Was]
eighteen years old, six months pregnant, a good daughter,
wife, soon-to-be mother. Because he was loading
a pistol at the kitchen table. Because the pop was like
the sound canning jars make when they seal,
only louder. Because the bullet sped past her, entered
the wallpaper stamped with roses strangling a bower.
Because he lost the tip of his finger. Because she
grabbed a dish towel from the counter, found the keys
to the Ford, drove to the hospital. Because he was
cursing. Because she was careful, stopped at each
stop sign. Because her appearance. Dark circles
under her eyes, wrinkled polyester shorts with the
elastic waistband. Because gunshot wounds
are investigated. Because they kept them separated.
Because the policeman's badge was blinding.
Because she never once cried. Because months later,
when she went two weeks over, they induced labor.
Because the bitter liquid, because the laxatives, because
the forceps, pain, stitches, bleeding, nightmares.
Because she did not know she could leave.
Because she would learn to hide all his guns.
Because the restraining order. Because the divorce.
Because the shame. Because. Because. Because
she finally cried after the baby grew up
to be just like him.
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Details and Ordering
Publication Date: November 1, 2026
Format: Softcover, 6" x 9"
ISBN: 978-1-961127-30-2
Price: $19.00
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About the Author
Jessica D. Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky and spent her formative years on her great-grandfather's farm near Rough River, Kentucky.
For many years, she served as a crisis office volunteer and hospital advocate for the Center for Women and Families, in Louisville, Kentucky. She also helped establish the Southern Indiana Transitional Shelter in New Albany, Indiana, which provided transitional housing for abused women and their children.
Her poetry has appeared on Verse Daily, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has been published in journals such as Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Appalachian Review, Atlanta Review, Braided Way Magazine, Common Ground Review, Eclectica Magazine, Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, a journal of poetry, The Midwest Quarterly, The Southern Review, Tiferet, Thimble, and the Tipton Poetry Journal, as well as in many anthologies, including Women Speak, Women of Appalachia Project (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and Next Indiana Campfires: a Trail Companion (Indiana Humanities). Her awards include the 2013 James Baker Hall Memorial Prize in Poetry (New Southerner) and the 2014 Kudzu Poetry Prize. Her poetry collections include Daybreak and Deep (Kelsay Books), which was a finalist for the 2024 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award for Poetry; When Animals Miss the Sun (Brick Street Poetry, 2024), a children's book, which she co-authored; The Mood Ring Diaries, (Kelsay Books, 2025), a finalist in the American Book Fest Best Books for Narrative Poetry; and Birds of Thunder, (Accents Publishing, 2026).
She was thrilled when her poem, "The Grandmother Who Fell from the Sky," was part of a lunar capsule, a three-volume poetry anthology curated by Brick Street Poetry, which landed on the moon in 2025, as part of the payload of Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost, in conjunction with the cultural payload for the Lunar Codex project.
Jessica currently writes in a 1918 log cabin in a hardwood forest in south-central Indiana.
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