irl
by Danielle McMahon
 
irl is a chapbook cast in amber, a series of poems with a nostalgic bent, framed by clips of AOL Instant Messenger conversations. It is a love story and it is also not.  It’s about kinship, communication, coming of age, and finding the right person at the right time. The poems of irl are tender without ever being sentimental and capture the agony and ecstasy of being seen as a young person.
 
About the Author
Danielle McMahon is sometimes scatterbrained, always tongue-tied.  She is author of Cold rain in Pittsburgh (Bottlecap Press 2024), The Oracle’s Voicemail (Alien Buddha Press 2024), The TV Guide (Alien Buddha Press 2024), insecure lovesong (Maverick Duck Press 2024), and rowhouse song (Ghost City Press 2025).  Her poetry can be found in various literary journals in print and online.  She lives in Pennsylvania with her family.
 
74 pages
Perfectbound with spine
Publication date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-89692-792-1
 
Praise for irl
"irl is what cuts through the radio static when the dead zone ends on a winding midnight drive through the middle of nowhere. It is the neon pulse of the lovesick heart and the shards of a glittering eternity. McMahon sings of the age when the small town last felt like the universe: of desolate landscapes crackling with life, and of the electricity of opening oneself to the possibility of everything."
 
— Amy Jannotti, author of Angels & Insects are Creatures with Wings and editor-in-chief of Bleating Thing Magazine
 
“A concrete journey into the sweet softness and earnest freedom of life when technology was a place to connect or hide free from contemporary norms. Wistful and immediately precise, irl creates a distinctive, trustworthy guide through parallelism and analogy, the smell of the earth and the quiet of the night, inspiring wonder regarding the relationship between peace and tension, the power of language to transport through time, and the joys or sorrows of recognizing in another 'my satellite / in a starless sky.'"
 
— Lydia Rae Bush, author of Free Bleeding
 
“Tender without ever being sentimental, even the silences in these pieces are deliberate and weighted accordingly. More than anything, these poems capture the agony and ecstasy of being seen as a young person. Where do these visceral memories go in the hearts of grown-ups? If we're lucky, we seek them with as much care, and turn them into art with as much attention, as McMahon does here."
 
— Abigail E. Myers, author of The Last Analog Teenagers
 
“At turns visually striking and intimately conversational, irl is a fascinating poetic exploration."
 
— Audrey T. Carroll, author of The Gaia Hypothesis