Heat Death of the Universe by Leela Raj-Sankar

Heat Death of the Universe is an exploration of adolescence in the desert. Spanning themes of race, illness, love, and loss, these poems are deeply somatic and regionally grounded. At its core, Heat Death of the Universe is a collection about the body and its long, dizzy slide from childhood to adulthood.

Leela Raj-Sankar is a high schooler from Arizona. She is a 2022 nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology. Her writing has appeared in magazines such as CLOVES Literary, Overheard, and Gastropoda Lit, among others. She's a poetry reader for Farside Review and an editor for Renaissance Review. In her spare time, she enjoys singing and playing board games.

“In her debut collection Heat Death of the Universe, Leela Raj-Sankar gorgeously directs readers on a vivid hike through sea-soaked geographies spliced with meditations on liminality, impassable distances, and the heat exhaustion of teenage desire. Through incisive verse that resists universality and teaches us how to love its author on her terms, Raj-Sankar reckons with the event horizon that is adulthood, asking us to consider what survival looks like when growing up kills you. Reading these poems left me reminded that the hope oftentimes comes within the hurt despite a world that demands we get by, get over, and get well. This one’s a stellar must-read for girls who never get well.” —Yasmine Bolden

“Heat Death of the Universe feels like coming of age in a rumbling summer heat. You’re “fifteen and scared of the future”, an earnest voice laced with sick-girl cynicism, someone who wants to believe a gushing love when they say they’ll name the sun for you but asks “in what language? In which season?” Reading this chapbook, I think about that twisty kind of love born of deserts and wishing for rain. Leela is a force of nature, by turns a whispering breeze and a raging thunderstorm. What always stays is the emotion, the beauty of her language—Leela’s words grab your hand and walk you through the house of her memories from the first line.” —June Lin, author of how to construct a breakup poem