Big Money Porno Mommy asserts that desire is worth taking seriously—even when it makes us uncomfortable. This collection, grounded by a series of poems all titled “The Phone Sex Poem,” explores the author’s complex relationship to sex and power from childhood through adulthood, and how this tenuous balance relates to her decision to not become a mother. Big Money Porno Mommy offers no easy answers, but instead asks the reader to consider their relationships to porn, parenting, body, and innocence in hard-hitting, often very funny poems.

“These poems are smart, honest, and tackle shame in the ways I find realistic: skipping the self-love proclamations and just putting the past out there without judgment. This book is like a bat signal for all the anxious little freaks: write those poems. Yeah, those poems. The messy, the embarrassing, the nasty, the hard to categorize. Sylvia Plath could’ve never guessed that confessional poetry would get to this point. But what the hell else is poetry for than to put it all out there, just so someone can look up from your book and say, oh shit, me too?”
—Myles Taylor

“Big Money Porno Mommy is a collection I wish I had when I was questioning desire during my young girlhood. Using remarkable form with such range throughout, Weiss brings us another successful poetry collection interrogating what it means to feel physical and emotional desire. You’ll find poems about the unpaid labor of phone sex, pornography as a work of art, and the lineage of joy.”
—Maya Williams