Harrison Hamm, born in Memphis, Tennessee, is the author of If It’s Country Music You Want (Poetry Society of America, 2026). He has received screenwriting honors from GLAAD, the Black List, and New York Stage and Film and lives in New York City, where he is an MFA candidate in creative writing at New York University.

Self-Portrait as Boo Radley

by Harrison Hamm
Listen to Harrison Hamm read his poem:



When I was no longer welcome in church,
I was welcome to my solitude. To question religion

in a big empty house, haunted by bigger emptier
questions. Why, when I couldn’t parade my scars


around Dollar General or the only Sonic Drive-In
my family ever loved, I’d hit the Mennonite bakery
People on couch
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