The Break Up Tapes is split into three parts, with the delicate ribbon of a cassette tape narrating the tracks. Part one is love. The poet basks in the bliss that new and true love brings. Things fall apart in part two. There is a sense of mismatch, of unsaid words that threaten here and now, of the sun setting, and of resistance and denial. Part three is the destruction and rejection of traditional love. The poet reclaims her body and her power, defies romance, and uses others to get what she wants. There is no happy ending. Instead, there is relief, understanding, and gratitude for the aching beauty of loving yourself and others. "The Break Up Tapes is a yearning for analog affection in an unyieldingly digital world. Jacqueline seeks lyricism in the cruelty and absurdity of modern love. In the end, she finds dignity amidst a social landscape where "the internet is making [us] dumber and sadder and terrible." - Cory Massaro, author and speaker of tongues human and digital "With wit and unfiltered honesty, these poems capture finding love and connection in an age where we are all chronically online. It is both hilarious and heartbreaking, sexy and sad, as Gallegos with her direct and deeply moving style skillfully drags us through the bleak, exhausting, and painfully real world of millennial dating." - Emer Martin, author of The Cruelty Men series "The Break Up Tapes traces the quiet, often unspoken ways we tie the search for ourselves to the search for someone else. These poems breathe against the heavy air of individualism, insisting that sharing our lives isn't a luxury, but a hard must-have. Gallegos shows us why love refuses to go out of style, because the human soul is too unruly to stay trapped inside a single person." - David Perez author of Love in a Time of Robot Apocalypse from Write Bloody Publishing and Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Emeritus Jacqueline Gallegos, known as Jacqnasty on the stage, is from the Bay Area, California. She now lives on the California Central Coast with her family. She has never moved away from the Golden State, but travels anytime she has a buck, a calling, and a few days off. She was a member of the Santa Cruz Poetry Slam Team, placing 8th in the nation at The National Poetry Slam. Her work has appeared in Red Wheelbarrow, Chinquapin, Porter Gulch Review, and Caesura. Her first book Not Yet Fluent in Luminescence was published by Space Cadet Records in 2015.