Jade Homa is a poet and inter-sectional feminist who prides herself on being soft. As an Instagram poet, she has over 6,000 followers. I've had the joy of being friends with Jade for about a year now, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to dive further into the work that I love and give it a chance for a larger audience.
Homa's poems come directly from her personal experience and feelings, and that shows immediately upon reading; she grounds the reader in her reality as much as possible to make them feel everything that she feels. In "soft as bubbles," for example, the whole poem hinges on Homa "unpacking" the fact that her HR team lead compared her and part of her team to the Power-puff Girls, and he immediately said she was Bubbles. She brings the reader through her life and shows her relationship with femininity and her love of women until she finally embraces it: "At 19, I've realized I can be bad-ass and femme." She then brings that realization to the reader for a satisfying, full circle ending: "Stay soft / like a sweater / or cotton candy / or the web between / my fingers / or her mouth / or the / way / our eyes / meet."
That is one thing about Jade's poetry that I've always loved: the perfection of her endings. They always leave the reader with something to feel afterward, and plenty of them have stuck with us. Personally, my favorite is what a large consensus of readers agree should be the epilogue of Jade's future poetry book, "Growing Pains": "Here's to admitting that neither of us was the hero or the villain / We were both just trying to survive in a world where only one of us could... / And i hope it's you." The ending there wraps perfectly, summarizing the end of a relationship in only three lines that keep the reader satisfied and lets them know that even though the relationship is over, the feelings are still there. It honestly reminds me of the rhyming couplet in Shakespearean sonnets in the way that it ends so finally, but gives the reader something to think about long after they've read it.
"messy" is a simple poem that perfectly illustrates the mistakes made in a messy relationship that didn't work out, framed in how Homa would explain the relationship to a child. It reads as follows: "if I had to explain our relationship to a five-year-old, I'd describe it as / a coloring book and 5 gray crayons / I'd say: 'look at the mess we made.' / I'd say: 'nothing good came out of this' / I'd say: 'most days, I didn't even stay in the lines at all.'"
This poem isn't long by any means. It's short and built on a metaphor, but it also teaches the reader so much about this relationship: it was messy, nothing good came out of it, and she made plenty of mistakes by coloring outside the lines. This poem makes sense and is easily accessible, something that people who've been to any public school will come to gladly accept. Jade Homa might be expressing her emotions and experiences through her poetry, but she's also opening the world of poetry up to thousands of people.
Jade can be found on Instagram @jadehoma.
