Transmasculine Poetics:
Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us

Sundress Publications • Knoxville, TN

Copyright © 2024 by Sundress Publications
ISBN: 978-1-951979-59-1
Published by Sundress Publications
www.sundresspublications.com

Book Editor: Remi Recchia
Managing Editors: Tennison S. Black, Erin Elizabeth Smith
Editorial Assistant: Kanika Lawton
Editorial Interns: Izzy Astuto, Heather Domenicis, Ken Doss, Addie Dodge, Hedaya
Hasan, Caitlin Mulqueen
Colophon: This book is set in Bembo Standard.
Cover Design: Kristen Ton
Book Design: Erin Elizabeth SmithTransmasculine Poetics:
Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us
Edited by Remi Recchia

TABLE OF CONTENTSREMI RECCHIA
Editor’s Note09

FOX RINNE
Pre-Op12

PAXTON GREY
sunlight falling across a voidvirginia is for [gay] lovers

14
17

KAIYA GORDON
Bruce Springsteen Visits Me at the Doctor’s Office

18

N.W. DOWNS
What We Talk About When We Talk About Waylon Jennings

19

KB BROOKINS
Toxic Masculinity

22

CHING-IN CHEN
Dear O
Contrary

30
32

JAYCE PHANTOM GRIMSHAW
praying for phalloplasty

33

JESSE SMITH
i dream a man fucks me with the lights on

35

JULIAN APPLEBAUM
Looking at My Chest After Top Surgery

36

JENDI REITER
Ariel

37

JACKSON PHOENIX NASH
Cradling a disaster 30 feet in the air

39

SAMUEL CLARK
The Poet Rewrites His Hysterectomy's Operative Report

42

BIRCH ROSENMy dick is a threat to national security

46

CHARLIE DALEThe Apocalypse

47

CEE CHÁVEZ
Start with Soap

50

CARI MUÑOZ
Dyke Blues & Note to Self: Stop Dating Cis WomenMy Whole Name Is a Dead Name

54
56

ARWYN CARPENTER
You and I both are both57

BENJAMIN ANTHONY RHODES
Fido Got a Sex Change

59

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION
Group Portrait as Parrotfish

60

ARI J. LISNER
End of August63

KY LOHRENZ
Second Coming

65

LUKE SUTHERLAND
Citrus67

MO HAKALA
A Study in Removing Invasive Parts Plants

68

CODY TIEMAN
You were there but I was too wrapped up in myself to notice70

ADRIAN SPETH
Trans Street Boxer

71

MITCH MONROY
read, red, sweetgum72

MAX STONE
I've got a fake i.d. from nevada and no name

75

REBECCA MARTIN
Like Any Queer from Ohio, I Mimicked My Host to Survive

78

GALEN DAVID BUNTING
if you’re Theseus and I’m Theseus, who’s going to get us out of this labyrinth?

80

SHANE DEDMAN
Queery82

ANDIE JONES
Shame: The Inconvenient Translator

84

LEE NEPTUNE
surgery scars

86

LEVI CAIN
The Great Outdoors

87

JESSIE KEARY
Boy by Flood

88

GION DAVIS
Simple Divorces

90

JULIAN GUYABECEDARIAN for TRANS JOYI Love You

95
97

Notes
About the Authors
Reprint Credits
Recommended Reading
About the Editor

101
102
111
113
114

EDITOR’S NOTE
When I first embarked on this project, I was under the impression that it would be the first of its
kind: an inaugural, groundbreaking anthology featuring transmasculine poets of a diverse range ofraces, sexualities, nationalities, ages, and endless other demographics. I was proud of this idea, thisurge to share our narratives and lives and naked selves. (The conceit was, incidentally, inspired byTrace Peterson and TC Tolbert’s 2013 Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry andPoetics.) I was mistaken, though: At least one poetry collection centering transmasculine voices
already had its place in the world. That anthology, edited by Michael Eric Brown and Max
Andeo Meyer, is titled Defining Myself: Transmasculine Experience Through Poetry and was
published in 2016. My initial reaction was dismay. First of all, how could I not have known about
this book? How many others were out there, anyway? And second of all—and this does not castme in a good light—why could my anthology not have been the seminal work on transmasculine
poetics? How unfair, I bemoaned. How disappointing.
In reading and rereading the hundreds of submissions in response to the call for myTransmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us, however, I
began to realize how special it was to continue work that others have begun instead of to break
new ground. Transmasculine people have, after all, always existed. Our hearts race and lungs singand palms sweat in every nation and culture and place. We are in your synagogues, yourcathedrals, your mosques. We are in your hometown and your destination vacation. We are inyour schools and in your neighborhoods. We are here. We are here. We are here.
James Baldwin in his essay “Princes and Powers” says of masculinity, “What, in sum, black men
held in common was their ache to come into the world as men. And this ache united people who
might otherwise have been divided as to what a man should be.” As a trans man living in thecurrent era of the violently dehumanizing “trans issue,” I have long sat with Baldwin andinternalized his words, repeating them to myself in the dark. Their ache to come into the world asmen. I do not claim that transphobia has had an equally historic and wide-reaching impact aswhite supremacy. (The insidious hydra of white supremacy does, however, affect all marginalized9

people, especially those holding multiple minority identities, such as trans men of color.) I havenot experienced racism. I have had many privileges in my life: housing security, a stable income,whiteness. I will say, instead, that as a trans man, I can empathize with a certain aspect ofBaldwin’s experience in that I understand what it is like to have a majority group of people who
do not look like me decide when and if I can be a man. When and if the men in power willrecognize my inherent worth.

Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us seeks to recognize
the dignity inherent in all transmasculine people, be they men or nonbinary or genderfluid oranything and everything in between. The poets in this anthology offer great service in
representing their softest, most vulnerable underbellies. They make love and tell jokes and pray to
the Lord. I tremble and laugh and worship alongside them. Please, won’t you join us?
—Remi Recchia, PhD

10

FOX RINNE
Pre-OpI google how long after surgery can I have you

in my mouth and take my favorite
answer. As long as we keep
my heart low, my blood quiet,
we can still sate ourselves in the aviaryof my body. Spoon your thumbpast my teeth. Brush my neckto steer the honey down. Would you,if I asked,
run your tongue along the stitch of me
like sealing a letter? I know

12the body my bodyaches for. I go to write a list of what’s lostin transition, but it stays empty.
In a dream, I doe-eye the knife
and your hands hold my wrists
over my head. I decide in the new year
I am never waiting. Even now,
before the scalpel, before the stupor,
my chest
is the cuttlebone
hanging in your cage,
thinning as you sharpen
your ripe beak.

13

PAXTON GREY
sunlight falling across a voidi.
often the shadows draped along crevices feel more real than the palemeat of my thigh. i am drowning in the turbulent wakeof reality, but a constellation of pinpricks unfolds across
my skin. this will make you a man. & i am
without a body, unmoored & weightless. because
what is a man with no boyhood? i am shaky
foundations streaked with grief.
wherever i go, the fields of poppies die.
& from between the shriveled stems, the wrong
memories scamper in & out, curious & too real.
i fight the urge to pin them to a tray & discover
their anatomy. because it’s time to suffocate a myth:a quick, confident smile not slashed across the ghostof a young boy. laughter never erupting

14

on the riverbank. this will make youa man.
ii.
but my name appears like an angel: alien& soft. too many eyes far too comfortablein their sockets. too many instances of me
to count. one & infinite, each gazing intobrine. my name appears like an angel: toosudden. too bright to bury strangers in. theycome & go, always above ground. treading
packed stone too hard to carve. my nameappears like an angel: speaking in distorted& lost hymns, too loud to truly hear. too
many syllables, all garbled & strange. speak
my name: i am too naked to stay hidden.

iii.
i practice dipping a toe in my sadness, as if i could feelthe siren song. i timidly cup my hands around happiness growing

15

as fast as my hair. this is not to be confused with nourishment.
if only i was fed forgiveness, that fatty meal
the color of a fish’s belly. if only i’d been
properly mourned—a young girl, eager
to scar, dissipating like the sunlight. if only
i’d been permitted to rest in my bones, curledin the warmth of my own marrow. this will makeyou a man, & you might sing.

16

PAXTON GREY
virginia is for [gay] lovers
when a man falls in love with a woman, does he do it face-first out
the front door? because i'm going to see if i can assemble the moonfor [him]. manipulate glowing chunks of rock in the void of space.
there is silence as it wells inside me: this hunger for [his] gravity.
i want to behold [his] hands. fingers interlaced with mine, palms
pressed against each other. [& red will trickle its way out of thecrevices. we’ll be caught & it will be a joy. & to wash his hands
afterward is a brand of holy. because] falling in love is a question
dislodged & evolved into a declaration.
the loosening of a projectile is acknowledgment of the truth ofdestination. [relegated to implication & whispers. his face & mine
hidden among the stars. 143 words & not quite kissing. because aslogan must necessarily be short.

17

KAIYA GORDON
Bruce Springsteen Visits Me at the Doctor’s Office
I’m laid back on the table, feet in stirrups, when he comes in. My first
surprise cervicalexam. As the doctor learns that she can hurtme, Bruce pulls out a guitar from behind his back. My interior
self rises from its
tabled cell to meet him. I have organized my lifearound illness. I have organized my body to fit through hospitaldoors. I have waited for Bruce to bolster me with his rugged appeal.
Maybe he can re-shape the doors. Maybe he can carry me
through.
Bruce’s arm winds up to play. His first notes roil with confused sorrowwith ache. I want
to clothe myself. I want to change
my hair, my face. While Bruce sings, I consider his boyish
figureI never wanted it. I never wanted mine
either.
My Bruce feels the same way. The two of us are flickeringinandout of being. But the doctor
doesn’t
notice.
Her fingers continue to probe. She doesn’t care forthe slickgrief covering my nude form. She cares only forthe pieces she probes. How embarrassing it is to have my cervix
wantedwithout the rest of me. How
exhausting
to be
a nude reclined with breasts but nota girl.
This table was never meant
for my body. If it was made for
Bruce’s,
he might save me. But in my doctor’s office, The Bossis trans too.
You can’t start a fire
while your body is probed apart. I can’t
look atfires without
anticipating the threatof being marred.

18

N.W. DOWNS
What We Talk About When We Talk About Waylon Jennings
somewhere in kansas you change your mind and start talking
again. this is what it’s like to share a house with a bigger
sadder man:not enough pain relief to go around. by now we know thatanything we can’t see from the bus windows
exists only in the future, the future that clicks from before tobehind in a fraction of a second. keeps leaving us alone withthe empty present. you say you wish i’d packed the guitar
instead of giving it away in chicago,no matter i hadn’t learned to play. it’s the principle of the thing
to you.

man, there’s fuck all out here, you say. testing the silence. we’reboth hoping it won't hold your weight.
how do i tell you that all of my nightmares happen in the
middle of the country? you, who dream in east-coast
technicolor and don’t know that out on the plains folks have to
wait for permission to speak.

19

how do i tell you that i know things you don’t? you, who wore
all of my clothes first and took the greyhound west with mejust to turn around and risk it on a plane backhome to where mom’s painting the living room roadkill-pink forthe second time. if it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be the favorite
son, you wouldn’t win a birthright. our sisters grew up and
now we can’t remember their names.
to be a son is to hold the gun. the bullet’s in your name but you
never knew where to point it, we’re halfway
through kansas and i’m making some suggestions. miles out
my window i can see you’ll run away, too. it’s the principle ofthe thing.
got your waylon & willie tape in my backpack, it’s the only
thing i’ve ever stolen from you and you won’t see it again.
shoot the bus up, man, take us out. a crime’s only as deadly as
the shooter’s motherand i’ll take the last hit, i’ll help you all the way. you, who takethings real personal, who can't play the guitar either
and won't try now, what do you have left to teach me? yellow
kansas is mine, i can see in your hands
you've never thought of it that way before. you'll never make itwest of the mississippi after this. we can both see it out thewindow:
20

the future, the sons' country divided, paint wet on the livingroom walls.
if mom had named me i bet it would have been something
awful. if she had it her way we'd be doctors, or lawyers. noneof this cowboy shit. too late now, she’d have us get off the bus
and walk home together.

21

KB BROOKINS
Toxic Masculinity
after Robert Frost & Nene Leakes

Name: Black boy
There ain't a heart he hasn’t broken
in this city. Though shitty men roamfrom hospitals to rooms they makevacant with their failures, he stood tall
& we thought maybe all our men-filled
disappointment would be solved
by a brother who makes the world shinewith his smile. Crooked & tall, he stays
casket-pretty. We stretched our hands out so far
to catch him. Every time he falls out of grace,
every time a new man emerges
just to be infected with thisstone-age sickness, we call our daughters.
Ask how they are doing. Ask them
if they’ve seen the inevitable news.

22Place of death: America
I know they loved me after all. Still,
I’m tasked with managing all this backhanded masculinity. My inheritance:
attacks on everything, mandated;
my father passed down the right to be reckless,to expect those “beneath us” to tidy
up our wreckage,to tell ourselves the translucent remnantsof white supremacy on our skinare a gender or sexuality’s fault, that we must be
harder than walls to withstand its evermore pain.
I’m only obliged to me.
I’m not ashamed of anything.
Cause: strangled himself to death
Just shut the door behind they asses. Kickthe insidious scouts for next generation’s
problems—peons passed down from one
broken man to the inevitable next. Just
cut the cord from Mary’s belly.
Great monolithic knees, the misguided beingskick back & watch their mothers stretch
their necks out again & again& again, the family torn from the inside—23

with help of extension cord acquired
In any event, the boy was found.
In a town where night grips
your toes while they dip from under covers,
begging for any cold air. He lived
in peace. He ripped
to pieces the day he learned
his father was the man
he thought he was. He cheatedon his mother, lied to maintain
lifetime dominance over people and things
that didn’t ask for it & despised
the world for making him out to be,closer than thin sheets on a naked bodyin a morgue, to failure at all times.
Black is not the word for it. Neither isinevitable, but that one’s closer.
from grandpa’s grandpa
The door is closed to men who wait to callpolice, or call the streets to come collect
their kin, who think me something subhuman—book it; double-crooked; Black boys,
our Black boys, thirsty
24like mad soldiers holding on tosomething relevant to patriarchy’s commands;
so comfy in their empty. Drinking on
my downfall like it was the red sea—God called
Said teach these niggas how
to do my deeds better. God isa man after all. Like the father of a boy
I raised who never calls‘less it’s for intent to harm
hard-earned harmony some other God sent
to heal us all from this one.
A 4th-generation suicide tool
I can’t wait to tell Columbus—
my father, the father of all hatredin these states we call home—he’s lost. Though I can’t taste the BBQof victory without his sauce. What is
victory if everyone’s lost?
I’m lost without a need; I want
to decree C’s dynasty dismantled,
but does that mean I’m free? That I
share? I want to help myself.

25

disguised as gift
Suppose there is a power struggle:
white man vs the world; colonizer vsthe things they decided to colonize. Too manyof them want to be god themselves.
Too many are too busy mandating laws
to break laws nature—the actual god
they claim to call—put in place herself. Help,said the Black boy drowningin all his want. Help me, said the billionaire
who legally mandates all of our drowning.
Name: Black man
If ever there was a time to hate, too late;
They hate us always. Like they hatethe crate of cavalier monostophes
charging at their larynx. Especially the one
compelling a grown man—no, a full-grown synonym for living
in hell, these states, this spell
enacted by white supremacy—
to cry. Who must die to holdtheir cold door open? Who folds
the fidgety card table chairbought for lie 99 into a thought?
26

Suppose that the Black boy is lost
without the fiery promise of
toxic power. In his quest, he asks—
Name: Black boi

Am I a god-fearing man? Am I happy?
Am I able to breathe? Am I single?
Will I let my masculinity, my mascbeaten hands wrap around her waist,take her down & drape her in all myinheritance, greenery her beautiful
my beautiful neckwith all of my fool’s gold
till she goes sinking in quicksand,the bed my grandpa’s grandpa
named Columbus madefor me? Am I an earth-fearing man?
Name: Black boy
Place of death: America
Cause: strangled himself to deathwith help of extension cord acquired
from grandpa’s grandpa
A 4th-generation suicide tool
disguised as gift27Name: Black man
Place of death: a state once stolen from Mexico
Cause: unnatural causes
Cause that started at “it’s a boy”
Survived by: Christopher Columbus
Name: Black boi
Place of death: their mind
Cause: a chip on their shoulder
A belly that stayed empty
An empty bed cause of subscription
to Christopher’s sins
Unwillingness to change
Pantomimed “traditional” manhood
A thing that’s taught so can be untaught
Ballistic failure survived by:a mother’s hysterics
Multiple bruised & bloodied hearts
Bodies that wish they never touched them
A little girl-turned-boy’s initiation
into a cultMountains are knees. Uphill,a tree asks me if it will ever see
daylight not injured by a human’s innermisdeeds. Its mother burned in a fiery furnace;
my sister interred in a chamber making
28

decisions based on futures in her womb. My womb
making a run for it—
running the run-on sentence into oblivion
missionary mayhem Mickey Mouse mysterymini me miming her death in front of a senator—
I think mountains are metaphors for the body.
There is no landscape we can call heaven.

29

CHING-IN CHEN
Dear OI was born, they said, a boy
into a heritage of paper
If a fire is placed in a crumbling wallit leads me to you, separated from the screen
I am not here often
The one who arrived, I lost him in the sea
I was born
so much missing your eyesightblooming without birds
My body unfolds
and the sound it sings in line
I lost you in the sea.
An ideal neighbor a stone buried below my mother's whitegrain building
A blue vat dye, burning stones to throw
All my unborn reckless as a lamp
strung as a lightbroke a path30

There was a boy who was not me
because I was a bird singing doublehearted in the floating line by the sea
soft-throated to face down
the audience

31

CHING-IN CHEN
Contrary
once I doveclear
to quickest end of water
I watched slow
Wind shook down

could see noreflection

moanedI stayedsilver crept in my moutha still bathI waited for golden eye
might shape a slim bodythe tongue

a glare of sun

might

32

waited for flicker

JAYCE PHANTOM GRIMSHAW
praying for phalloplasty
Tear us down and remake us in thy image—spare us this indignity,
constrict this chest, bind down this apostate heart;call us handsome, call us king.
We know thee, Lord.
We know thy works—
from clenched jaws and shouts,
signs allotting love no fag—
to the salt of the earth,found tongue to skinbetween knocking knees.
Let us repent
for every whimpering glance,
for every night spent shuddering, spent sobbing
in an empty bathtub, head against cold porcelain
bleeding in a room with no light.
Whoever said this was necessary?
Which was the science-soaked specterthat ever said we wanted this?

33

Who will we be when this gouge is gone,
when this gash no longer jags between these legs?
Will we be like unto thee?
In truth, we were only once thy creations,ever after inventing ourselves.
Perhaps this is only half of a remorse among many.
In the name of thy science,in the name of society,and, we suppose, in the name of thee,
Amen.

34

JESSE SMITH
i dream a man fucks me with the lights on
telling me
his lips into the softof my back: this body
is a male thingeven
as the scratchwork in
his palm comes to know
my chest, there’s flatness
at the second layer
those hands, keeping my hips
their size, pushing my deepest
voice out
i dream of facing up
to the light, indistinguishable from his hands

35

JULIAN APPLEBAUM
Looking at My Chest After Top Surgery
after “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Ignore the head beyond the mirror’s edge
with mint-gray eyes. In view, his torso flexes
under restretched skin and shines with glossy
rapture, in which new absence, stamped with scars,
marks a sovereign will. Otherwise,
the flat chest could not dazzle you so, nor could
blond hairs trail over alabastrine ribs and belly
to that soft chasm where procreation dips.
Otherwise, this body would be entombed
under lumps of fatty tissue and melancholy
and would not strut splendidly to class:would not, with its rebirthed edges,
triumph against the gods: You can change
your body. You have changed your life.

36

JENDI REITER
Ariel
after "Composition No. 3" by John Ollom

Jae the mermaid bleeds lipstick for the sins of the godfatherhead
who can tell a man is a man by the rate he crosses
a rooma man is a crab claw picking his shell bare from the inside
but Jae wears slashed velvet
on his skin gown
the final small blade a man bleeds out fromhides cupped in his touchdown hands like a shotglass
while saltwater streams over Jae's lips
from his scarlet matted hair
his undulation hums an orphaned whalesong
37furtively buckled
rhinestone padded bustier hugs his furred chest like a motherbless us Jae with your black nails
sharpened to teardrops
let the ocean pour out of our mirrors
as you plunge toward us at the rate of forgiveness38

JACKSON PHOENIX NASH
Cradling a disaster 30 feet in the air
When I was a kid they tried to straighten my teeth with train tracks,
rogue wires and lacerated cheeks, that stretching soreness,
pain and interdental brushes chugging daily through the tunnels
between cemented brackets,in an attempt to sculpt my smile
into something more acceptable,
something a bit less queer.
At about the same time
Maarten Struijs sculpted two plastic whale tails
for Spijkenisse station, completely unawarethat 20 years later they’d save a train driver’s life,
carriages caught by a fishy appendage,
cradling a disaster 30 feet in the air—
I wore a t-shirt once when I was feeling brave that said
“Some people are trans, get over it” and people kept misreading it,
they said “Some people are trains, get over it”
and at the time I thought they were wrong,but now I wonder.

39

Mermaids are often used as a metaphor for trans bodies
and I dream for a minute that these aren't whale tails at all,but the lower halves of trans people hiding top surgery scars
below concrete, hidingfrom the orthodontist,frozen in temporal pockets,pliers poised to snip train track wires
while the votes in America
stay caught between counted
and disputed.
It’s a fact that I have transgender teeth, still crooked,
and I’m lacerated
by fears that puncture my cheeks,holes that threaten to show mein the places that aren’t safe to be shown undersea,
like the classroom I’m working in now
on a Thursday morning,where young men talk every week about the grossness of queers,
and the things they’d like to do to women, and I shrink
to become one of a million indistinguishable plankton

40

swimming toward the maw of a whale,
until I hear across the waterthat in America
Sarah McBride became the first transgender state senator,and Mauree Turner became the first non-binary state lawmaker,
and that workers are finding a way to lifta Dutch train
hanging 30 feet in the air on a sculpture of a whale tailjust outside Rotterdam
to safety with a sling.
Passersby said they were cheered on
by a mermanwith scarred cheeks,with crooked teeth.

41

SAMUEL CLARK
The Poet Rewrites His Hysterectomy's Operative Report
PREOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS:
1. Gender dysphoria
POSTOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS# Same s/p total laparoscopic hysterectomy, bilateral salpingectomy
PROCEDURE:
1. Exam under anesthesia
2. Total laparoscopic hysterectomy
3. Bilateral salpingectomy
ANESTHESIA: GETAFLUIDS: 1300cc
ESTIMATED BLOOD LOSS: 50cc
COMPLICATIONS: none
SPECIMEN: Uterus, cervix, bilateral fallopian tubes

42

INDICATIONS: Female to male transgender patient desiring gender affirming hysterectomy andsatisfied all WPATH criteria
DESCRIPTION OF PROCEDURE:
Patient was taken to the OR where general anesthesia was administered. Patient was prepped anddraped in the normal sterile fashion in dorsal lithotomy position in yellow fin stirrups with care to
avoid lower extremity hyperextension, hyperflexion, and compression. Surgical timeout was
performed with the entire OR staff per protocol. Perioperative antibiotics were given. SCDs wereplaced and activated. EUA revealed the above findings.
Foley catheter was placed in sterile fashion. A speculum was placed in the patient's vagina. The
anterior lip of the cervix was gently grasped with a single-tooth tenaculum. A small V-Care uterine
manipulator was placed in the usual fashion, with the uterus sounding to 8cm. Remaining
instruments were removed from the vagina.
Attention was then turned to the patient's abdomen, where the umbilicus was infiltrated with local
anesthesia. A 10mm stab incision was then made. S-retractors were used to bluntly dissect till fascia
was visualized. Fascia was grasped with Kocher clamps and a defect was made with Mayo scissors.
Peritoneum was then identified and grasped with hemostats and entered sharply. The Hassan trocar
was inserted and balloon was insufflated. No entry trauma was noted. Upper abdominal survey
showed findings as above. Patient was then placed in steep Trendelenburg. Pelvic survey revealed
findings as above.
2 additional 5mm ports were then placed, 1 in each lower quadrant under direct visualization after
infiltrating incision sites with local anesthesia and making 5mm stab incisions.

43

The left fallopian tube was gently grasped and elongated. The ligasure device was used to seriallycauterize and cut the mesosalpinx beneath the tube proceeding medially. The procedure was thenrepeated on the contralateral side.
The right ureter was identified. The right cornua and utero-ovarian ligament were cauterized andtransected with the ligasure device, and the adnexa were dissected off. The procedure was thenrepeated on the contralateral side.
The right round ligament was cauterized and transected. The broad ligament was then skeletonized.
A bladder flap was created on the ipsilateral side. These steps were then repeated on thecontralateral side. The broad ligament was then further skeletonized to the level of the bilateraluterine arteries. The uterine arteries were then cauterized and transected on both sides. The pedicles
were then lateralized with excellent hemostasis noted. The uterus then appeared blanched.
The colpotomy was performed with monopolar L-hook device. The uterus and cervix were thendelivered via the vagina. An occlusive device was placed in the vagina.
The vaginal cuff was then sutured laparoscopically with 0 V-Loc running suture, taking care toincorporate the vaginal mucosa, underlying fascia, and peritoneal edge in each bite.
Excellent hemostasis was noted at the conclusion of this procedure, even under reduced
pneumoperitoneum. Cystoscopy was then performed with findings as above.
All instruments were removed from the patient's abdomen under direct visualization.
Pneumoperitoneum was decompressed, and the remaining ports were removed under direct
visualization. The 10mm fascial incision was then repaired with 0 Vicryl . Skin incisions wereclosed with 4-0 monocryl. Sterile dressing was placed.
44Patient tolerated the procedure well. Sponge, lap, and needle counts correct x 2. Dr. Higuchi
joined case to perform hydrocelectomy, please see separate note for details.
Dr. Ton i ck was present and scrubbed for the entire procedure.

45

BIRCH ROSENMy dick is a threat to national security
I’m told,
and that is what justifies
groping my body at the airport.
My dick is a threat to national security:a whistle blown on the lie that surveillance is safety,
a reminder that borders cannot constrain reality.
My dick is a threat to national security.
Who knew something so small
could cause such a big fuss?

46

CHARLIE DALEThe Apocalypse
While you live on planet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live onplanet Peeing Is the Apocalypse. While you live onplanet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live on planet I Know
Where Every Bathroom Is. While you live onplanet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live on planet Fear
Every Fucking Men's Room. While you live onplanet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live on planet I’m Assessing
the Necessity of Every Sip of Water. While you live onplanet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live on planet How Long Do I Have
to Be in Here? Do They Think I’m a Guy? Do They Think I’m a Girl?
Deconstructing gender while reconstructing it for safety with every step.
While you live on planet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I live onplanet Why’d I Wear This Shirt. Does My Chest Look Weird? Why’d I
Wear These Pants? Do My Hips Show? Why’d I Wear This Dick? I Can’t Even Stand47

to Pee in a Urinal. While you live on planet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park
I live on planet I’m Waiting 15 Minutes in San José International Airport
Telling the Fourth Dude to Go Ahead and “Just Use It! I’m Waiting for the Stall.”
While you live on planet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I second-guess everything. Do I
dare risk the impending doom, of only one escape route, collapsing
my world falling into catastrophic defeat? Do I dare to risk trying
the taunting knob of the gender-neutral bathroom stall only to be mocked
when it is surely being used and locked? Mocked by the women’s iconon the adjacent restroom door, a restroom I used to use with ease—correction:
more like repulsive confusion—but at least I knew I passed the test,
played woman so well I knew I was safe. See, while you lived onplanet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park, I lived in Every Ounce of this Skin

Feels Wrong. Can’t go back. So I chase another bathroom:a multi-stall. Gender-neutral? Or men’s? Genderneutral? Or men’s? Gender-neutral provides safety, while men’s, expedience:the pressure in it all. While you live on planet Peeing Is a Walk in the Park.
I live on planet Peeing Is the Apocalypse.
As I walk into the men’s room, I ask, am I prepared?

48

Urinal or toilet? Am I prepared? Noises unhuman?
Am I prepared? Men face to face, eyes down, walking
too close. Am I prepared? Men shitting loudly. Am I prepared? For guttural
moans and gassy atomic bombs. Am I prepared? For YouTube videos?
Am I prepared? For the bathroom warzone, never a peaceful place
to call my own. And even when I have the rightdick and choose a urinal, do I risk standing up, leaking, maybe peeing all over myself?
All for going to the bathroom in a way I feel “I should”
or do I risk the stall surrender to sitting surrounded by piss(and probably shit-) stained walls, wondering if they all notice
I’m peeing sitting down? Am I prepared?
Do cis men pee and shit at the same time?
If I do, is that a giveaway? Give way to everything I know,
everything you need me to be, create my own planet, just so I cansit down, rest, and pee.

49

CEE CHÁVEZ
Start with Soap

At first you think there is nothing worse than this:Death of Self.

It is not a literal death
It is the death of a version of you—a version you thought you might be

A dances-in-the-kitchen-as-the-sun-rises version
A takes-care-of-your-parents-in-their-old-age version50

A reaches-to-call-someone-who-is-definitely-stillthere version
An untouched-by-the-grief-of-what-has-changedyou version.

The thing is, though, you have been touched.
That is the very catalyst of the death itself.

People talk about what to do after the death of aparent or spouse or child or sibling.
What about the death of Self?

51

There are no resources to help you through this.

There is no instruction manual with illustrations or
infographics detailing the steps you can take aftersurviving the loss of Self.

How do you make room for joy?
How do you let go of the expectation to return to aplace that no longer exists?

How do you accept the new way you experience theworld?

52

How do you wash yourself clean of what you
thought you might be and make room for what youare?

Start with soap.

53

CARI MUÑOZ
Dyke Blues & Note to Self: Stop Dating Cis Women“Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as thosewere the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.”–Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Bluesi bend knee, body on top of body, hold cocktail
glass stem, pinched between two fingers.
look attentively at the woman, whose eyes examine
the shape of my hand and the way my body falls over itself.
she measures the space between chin to breasts.
touches my hair, and her hand falls to the chain on my neck.
she cocks her head and says, i thought you’d be more masculine.
her hand far from my body now. i breathe a deep sighfeel the tightness of binder on chest. adjust bodyto move like man, to move in a way that makes us bothdesirable, me and body. me and lover. imagine ushusband and wife, barely recognizable. so queer
we no longer become queer. an easy answer
to the question, who is the boy and who is the girl?
and no, this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.
but how do i explain to her, i want to be bothi want to be neither. i want to be body that is desired
above all else, i want to be husband and wife. i want to bebutch and twink. how can i explain this to her?
i love this body that moves in ways that go beyond

54what she makes of it. that becomes more than flesh
and hands, and knee. that becomes all lover and all
beloved. i want to be bound to a body that holds mein all the ways i am becoming.

55

CARI MUÑOZMy Whole Name Is a Dead Name

56

ARWYN CARPENTER
You and I both are bothYour hardness and your wetness
your outward driving, your inward sinking
your force to change everything, your agility to switch
First your cockmouthedyou kneeling above my supine form
I’m kneading you with my lips
rinsing you with wet spit
pulling your shaft out longfrom its rooted nook
rolling it
wringing it
milking as it wereThen your cunta wet recessa whirlpool
my tongue drawn entranced
it swirls and plunges
around and in
thickening against your clutchcoaxingsummoningfucking as it were57

Your hardness and your wetness
one asking, one allowing
one dreaming of fullness
one needing to empty
I love that you and I bothare bothYou’ll know your hand’s the key
to my opening need
you’ll find me, gauge me
insist, press further
between your fingers, my web of wet
between my fingers, your slippery sap
Daddy me and be my boy
kiss my forehead and I’ll kiss yours

58

BENJAMIN ANTHONY RHODES
Fido Got a Sex Change
Early in the morning a dog who didn't know his name opened his eyes anddecided to go back to sleep. He was cozy under the quilt in a flannel shirt andsweatpants plus he didn't have any time-bound obligations that day, no Zoom
meetings or doctor's appointments, no pressing reason to disturb his clothridden Zen, but his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth so hebegrudgingly got out of bed to refill his water bowl from the Britta. Two days
ago his country inaugurated a new president, but he missed the televised
inauguration because he was getting the plastic tubes in his side taken out,
not ripped out as his doctor lightly chastised and corrected him, merely taken
out, no tugs, no elbow flying toward the back wall with a grand inaugurationof pain. It hurt more when the doctor replaced the glue strips on his nipples,
his chest somehow simultaneously numb and achy where less than a week
ago he had had breasts. The doc showed him a pic, warning him that it was
gross, and the dog was surprised to see that his breast had been removed all at
once, not sucked away in bits through a hose. There it sat on top of his
unconscious chest, a slab of red meat with bits of fat and gristle and a few
confusing black spots, though not enough to deter him from eating it if hefound it on the street. The dog thanked his doctor, put on his shirt and coat,
and walked out the door. He thought he might try to draw a picture of his
breast meat from memory when he got home, the shape of it vaguely
resembling Australia, but he didn't have a colored pencil in a deep enoughshade of red, so he laid down on the couch with two pillows behind his headand shoulders, wrapped his body in a blue blanket, and slept. When he wokeup, he remembered his name, but he couldn't for the life of him find his keys.

59

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION
Group Portrait as Parrotfish
science calls us sequential hermaphrodites

we have no namescales glimmer brown gold

after my mate passes
i change gender

don a new life

scatter eggs into the abyss

sixty feet under the sea.
60

p
om

it

coral crackles
sunlight
chweglory holes
shit pebblesof hawaii's
white sandbeaches

night
falls

we

secretemucus

membranes

fromforeheads

cocoonourbodiesin memory.
61my kind grow giantloom in storms

at the bottom of the sea

know our existence in itself

magnificence.

62

ARI J. LISNER
End of August
Hurricanes do not scare me the sky is purple and everyone is at home and online
It all makes for a very closed system
Which I love obviously
I do not have it in me for Israel or parties for beer even much less a burrito much less anything withenough net carbs to send my mother over the edge
I am indebted to my mother
She took me to Atlantic City after my breakup and let me piss away all of her money let me playvideo poker let me win four hundred on the slots and slip an extra twenty put it in my back pocket
and pretend like it never existed because that is exactly how she taught it to me. Taught me to lie tomake sure that I know I am coming out the winner. I know and nobody else
She let me play Neil Young in the car at 4am on the way home she said that she liked him actually
there on the Expressway
My voice projects these days
I am a Ben Lerner forever I have been learning forever been leaning foreverA friend says it is mud city but actually it is worm city worms breathe mud mud breeds worms beer
makes me feel like fucking shit hello NSA hello calmer audience hello
I say I am renouncing lesbianhood
Then I make eye contact with Rubyfruit Jungle

63

The references they
Haunt meNo one tells you that testosterone is actually the femmiest drug in the entire world it makes you
have sympathy for men it makes you want to text men and makes you want to emphasize withthem itmakes you text to your college friends
Hello hello like I’m fucking RuPaul hello hello like I’m fucking fracking
I’m not gonna be Eileen Myles64

KY LOHRENZ
Second Coming
it’s january & god
got it wrong—ashtrays ice into selves
we sloughed in fire.
bridges crack in half.
how ridiculous it is to want
here. to watch helicopterscrash in smog & still pray
to crush my mouth
against another mouth
just to watch it wilt.
you told me to grow a pair &i took it literally.
water a silicone cock before bed
expecting morning wood.
is there any time for self-indulgence?
to want some throbbing
65

future, some phantom
limb to thrust.

66

LUKE SUTHERLAND
CitrusIn place of a hysterectomy, I ask my girlfriend to fuck the womb out of me / “No more operatingrooms / Just lay me down and do it here” / She changes the bed linen / crisps the fitted sheet /The room is cold, a window is open / She tells me this will help / From where I lay, I watch her
light candles and fiddle with speakers / It feels like porn, but I don’t say so /She is the priestess, and I am a small sacrifice ready to give up / my warmest part /When she fucks me, she uses her hand / Inside me is / everything / she has ever held / Cupped
water / a baby bird / sand dollars flat and round / the fingers and fists of other people /I bite pillows / She braces my hips /When it is done, she slides out / I close my eyes and feel / heavenly emptiness / Her head on my
belly, I cry / Look, she says / and what I see is / the object / in her damp hand /A small clementine, blood pooling in its pores / I watch her peel the fruit / am misted by its oil /She unsheathes its flesh / arranges pithy segments down my chest /bisecting me / cleaved / I split /She eats them / one by one

67MO HAKALA
A Study in Removing Invasive Parts Plants
after torrin a. greathouse’s “Burning Haibun”

There is an invasive plant, see: organ, growing in my abdomen. Finally, the day has come toallow the entire garden to unfurl spring ready daffodils. I will take my scalpelled trowel,
dissection breaching the fatty topsoil surface of my skin. Strip back the protective sod fascia, glistening
loam under superficial web, then plunge my hand in, to feel the slick warmth coatlike a summer storm. Fingers tangle past the wriggly digestive tract of composting worms.
Ease through, remembering the screech of childhood Operation, careful not to nick theindulgent bodies. I find the intruder hollowed in pelvic garden bed. I pull but invasive plants
cling roots to every bountiful surface. Each tap root is gently pruned while my other handsteadily lifts the trifling rose mass, pearlescent field mouse muscle, until it starts to detach. Unassuming
for something that causes so much pain. Equilibrium needs to be returned, thesoil and creatures that live within, restored to their natural homes to settle into abundant
space. Earthly navel will bear a scar until the skin smooths out, hiding the evidence of today’s harvest.
The bulbs must stay but their seeds will never germinate. Resource sapper failing to drain awaylife blood, grow meaty from stolen cells, or wilt the native plants. Instead, burn.
Away from the garden. Carried for the final time, to the oil drum in the field, doused withlighter fluid and set ablaze while I warm myself.

68

There is an invasive plant, see: organ, growing in my abd has come to allow
the entire ga spring read. take my scalpelled trow breaching the fatty topsoil
hand in, to feel the slick warmth coat like a summer storm. Fingers tangle past
the composting worms. Ease through, remembering the screech ofchildhood, careful not to nick theindulgent b hollowed in pelvic garden bntiful surface. pearlescent field mouse muscle, pain.
Equilibrium needs to be restored the soil aneato settle into a spa scar until tht, hiding the evidence of
today’say
There
is
anThereisanThereisanlifeblood, grow den. Carried for the final time, to the oil drum in t myself.

entir spring row breaching the fatty topsoil ha in to feel warmth co childhood, carefullly field mouse
restored, evidence of today’s ay myself.

69

CODY TIEMAN
You were there but I was too wrapped up in myself to notice
I was asked to stack
the enormous cake at prom
I buried my hands in the thick icing
careful to embed my fingerprints
on each layer, enriching the design
with blue buttercream-coated hands
now shoved inside my dress pants
pockets, I skirted the dance floor
afraid to besmirchsomeone else’s elegancewith my fistfuls of confection.

70

ADRIAN SPETH
Trans Street Boxer
wannabe tapes his knuckles the same way
flattening the pain in a punch saving skinsplit against skin watch him fly feather
welter middle cruiser lined up in thepark past sundown spitting bloodand all the rest of it fire cracking
ricocheting crossed and cockeyeddown his spine he’s on his backand breathing hard lungs tearing
chest seared not near enough room
behind his ribs or below his hearton his back and up again on his backand up again he goes in knowing he swings
here or from a lazy-knotted rope.
blood and bone and beaten now but later
it’s a five in the hand and a ten in the backpocket denim and paper and all of it blownin the bar way down the county where theytell who your mouth’s been on
by the size of your belt buckle
dirt road to blacktop to tile floor always
on his knees in the end and all of it
most of it murky in the morning swollen
as a bruise and losing but he never losta fight he bet on winning anyway.
71MITCH MONROY
read, red, sweetgum
I-69 american sweetgum stretched meadow
blistering airspace

billboard read:“Indiana, meet your Uranus.
FUDGE FACTORY & GENERAL STORE
Coming 2022!”

rosy cheeks

mouth full of glee

a blinking tail lightflagged pumper

azure

x

starlined

a redneck red truck, turning rightwind turbines and thudding bug bodies
cicada songs safeguarded in grassy environs arusted wheel cap cartwheeled face flatover the median

75 miles away from:72

a knockfull ofrattling
sor /ghum

fists
bud

read sign: REST

raging beer beardtongue
sweltering kidney& swollen bellies

on the breathnever weiser

ROOM& tangled fright hands

red stones, wild flowering transboi seas

warning sign:

WRONG WAY

billboard read:“HELL IS REAL / JESUS IS REAL”

flaming horse-throats glorify lush american

DO NOT ENTER

read statesign:“BLOOD, SWEAT, AND CHEERS”

beaming sunlines——running——highway birth-scars
a prairie hugged pussyboi allied amidst fields of dense celery rows
across golden height corn &blooming pale beardtongue

on the horizon huddled cotton balls currrl vapor

73unparching farm lands
into punctured palms

breeding boys into greenfull of red

74

MAX STONE
I've got a fake i.d. from nevada and no name
I’m walking uptown to the ritz bar and lounge,a strange fog drapes over the buildings
like fuzzy orange curtains.
dead phone and no dance moves,terrified of inhaling a cobweb.
left K on 23rd street, half the city away,
she was parading me aroundlike an accessory: a wristwatch, a purse, a pet.
in the bathroom, dirty floor,
shoes, shoes scuffing screeching,get pushed against the wall,a group crowds in the stall together.
confront myself in the mirror.
tiny glass bottles clink to the floor.
had to pull away, walk fast up the slant of broadway.
wander outside, post up by the smokers,
they’ve all got stories about fire island, life cycle, and pride,
I’ve got a fake i.d. from nevada and no name.
at the bar upstairs by the gogo dancers in glittering speedos,
it feels like I’ve got a piece of fiberglass in my eye.
threading my way to one of the dance floors,thorns stabbing around in my chest,in the hallway someone touches the small of my back,hey, honey.
lean against the wall, and look up—
75

I can see stars.
there’s no one here for me.
pills to wake up and pills to sleep,
blur the hard edge of oblivion.
fade into the same color as the wall.
saw myself once—a reflection on the east river.
how can a god watch over me if I have no name?
what will I say if someone approaches?

it’s complicated?
order a gin and tonic as a sorry tribute to my dad,a hole in the heel of my sock, I’ve got a blister.
miss staring at the off-white wall.
supposed to be surrounded by my people here.
something is always burning.
don’t know what hunger feels like anymore.
they’re running out of names for hurricanes.
last week, I got lost in the bronx.
the man at the corner store said I looked like the morning after,
he told me the bus down the block would take meto the train, but you’ve got a long way till queens.
is this what it all means,a train rattling into—nevermind.
can almost hear the call of a birdin that three-note screech
when the subway car is pulling into the station.
sitting on this stupid stool at the bar,head resting on my knees,
it’s such a long way to queens.
spinning away, turning out,
I’m in the back garden running from the wasps,

76still don’t know why I sprayed their nest with the hose.
eyes closed, pulse of music, clink of ice,
voices clashing meshing.
I’m slipping and drifting through cracks, corners,
puddling, misting, like water,catch light—light catches me.
he’s pulling me to my feet,he’s saying something I can't hear.
I’m pulling away, he pulls me closer,says in my ear, just go with it.
music quiets, voices dull,
my pulse the new beat,fingers thread together, eyes meet,skin against skin—warmth. I exist.

77

REBECCA MARTIN
Like Any Queer from Ohio, I Mimicked My Host to Survive
Right now my gender is a holein the middle of my body. Sometimes
I feel like a monster’s mouth:
mostly teeth and hair, devouring
a girlhood I tried on: the ballerinaHalloween costume that itched all nightat the church harvest festival. Anypoem about grief is going to mention that whale
and her dead calf, but I don’t want to carry thatstory, the weight of it. It’s rude to talk about money
and grief in the Midwest. When I say Ohio, you thinkof the interstate, corn, and HELL IS REAL. I think
more and more about all the astronauts, the internet joke:

what is it about Ohio that makes a person want to leave Earth?
I’m trying to speak up before I’m dead. I’m trying
to stop looking at my phone when I have coffeewith the woman I love. She asked me to turnthe calendar of insects facedown. She asked,
do you think there’s still snow in the future? I want
to start shoplifting, want to be as selfish
as my body tells me it already is. My hands
around the lock at night, my hands counting78

out change for the dryer. If I look too closeat the specimens I’m gathering, I’m going
to fucking die! I read in an essay that monstrous
is code for vaginal and don’t even get me started
on the teeth. Is it a queer reading if I hateshowing up in the narrative? I’m one-eyedin my resolve to never see the alien,
its black beetle-shell body, the drummingin my chest when the crew knows it’s near. In Ohio
I wore a girl’s body at the waterpark, inflatablering drifting on a simulated river. Cicadas
wouldn’t stop landing on the inner tube,
on my arms and legs. Wouldn’t stop showing up
in my dreams, where they never buzzed against
my skin but crumbled their shells in my hands.
When they woke up, they were already dead.
Like them, I slept for seventeen years, burying
desire in any shallow grave I could. I worried
my family could hear it beneath my feet,some volcanic rumbling, some vague warningthat would doom only me. That some bird’s-egg
blue brought forth by the sun might settle over me.
That I might settle in a body untethered to girlhood.
That a body may be lurking offscreen, a holein the middle of a spaceship, in the middleof Ohio, all exoskeleton and open-mouthed want.

79

GALEN DAVID BUNTING
if you’re Theseus and I’m Theseus,
who’s going to get us out of this labyrinth?
from childhood I’ve been monstrous
my body too large, and yet too smallin short, a freak.
you and I know our placesin the sacred dance
you journeyed from afar,
and me? I’m pacing in the labyrinth
contorting myself to fit through tortuous pathways
my horns scrape furrows in the half-dark
and when a human voice echoes? I run.
must it be this always, this chasing, finding,must one always be Theseus, one always the minotaur?
if I’m the minotaur and you’re the minotaur
who’s running behind us, hoofbeats against stone?
who marked us from birth as a portent of woe?
and if you’re Theseus, and I’m Theseus,
who’s pulling on that silver thread?

80

who’s at the center of the labyrinth once we get there
and stare into each other’s unblinking eyes?
when we draw that silver cord taut, our bodies clumsy in the darkness
will there be fantastical creatures painted across the walls of our labyrinth
will we be overtaken with awe like those four boys
entering the caves at Lascaux in the middle of a world war?
no more death matches, no more abandonment on islands(there’s always another island)no more splitting yourself open on the rocks
and begging for the gods to listen
and no more kings.
if the pale green heart of the labyrinth is empty
we’ll leave our handprints smeared across its walls
if we cannot tear them down.
a sign for others
that we, too, have passed through this labyrinth.

81

SHANE DEDMAN
QueeryDoes my face bend light in a masculine way?
Do you consider my pronouns when we’re introduced?
Do I look different than how my voice sounds?
Am I clockable for pointing in my toes? swaying my hips? upspeaking?
Am I < your perception of masculinity?
Are you staring at my genitals?
Do you think transes who aren’t on hormones or haven’t had surgeries are legitimate?
If my tits aren’t bound, will you still bro me up?
Do you accept that I can wear glitter and be a boy?
Are you contemplating if I’m a top or bottom?
Why would you think that was okay to ask?!
Have you ever even had sex with a trans person?
Do you think I’m a fraud for filling all my holes?

82

Do you know what a chaser is?
Do you gender me correctly in my presence and absence?
Is my existence debatable?
Do you ever think of me in a post-gender way?
like
me: using whichever bathroom is less busy...

Have you ever seen a dog bite their own tail?

83

ANDIE JONES
Shame: The Inconvenient Translator
after Dante Collins
how have you felt on T : you don’t look very different to me
have you heard from your mom yet : can’t you just accept her not accepting you
what’s the name she gave you
so, are you gonna, like, fully transition:

what’s your real name:do you want a dickat least they’re trying : why aren’t intentions good enough for you
did you put in your name change application : do you really even want thisyethave you heard from your mom yet : mmmmm, trauma pornsex assigned at birth
but they love you:

what’s that between those legs:

careful, you’ll bleed out with blood that thin

did you see i liked Elliot Page’s post : look at me. i’m an ally now. right?

84so, when do you think : we can still tell
you’ll be done transitioning
i don’t have to understand it : i don’t want to understand it
but—we love you
i just don’t want to offend anybody:

please, take it back:Here, can you hold this guilt for a sec

it’s all you post about anymore : the mirror of your happiness terrifies my reflection
i’m sure your body is going through it right : can you feel the poison
now
what about kids : what a waste of a womb
give it time:

it is okay that they cannot love you right now

i just wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings : the fear you smell is realdeserve a mother who wants to know you at least
have you heard from your mom yet : you
as well as her own martyrdom
sending you extra hugs on days like this : how do we stop ourselves from killing you
we love you : that is all that should matter
you’re right. that is all that should matter.

85

LEE NEPTUNE
surgery scars
i carry these lines
two equatorsthat dip and climb
stretching mighty distanceunder / shape-shifting suns / defying time
i carry these lines
smiling up at mequelling
swelling storms of change
tending to bruised avalanches
imprints of a past life

86

LEVI CAIN
The Great Outdoors
i am growing as a pea shoot in your hand,springing up into smoothed-up dwelling place.
watch me blink my way into exhale,transform to staccato grunt when squeezed at the root.
i admit, i expand under any soft palm,
but:under your weight, i cometo a newer world. bright and trembling,full of health, plush as two lips
bitten beestung with impatience.
you too are made new by the slap of heat on heat.
you are archeologist on twice-damned ground, climbing fist by fist
into rapture. i have never been this happy.
origami’d into your nesting place,lapping up your shriek as rainwater, our cunts thunderinglike an overripe sky.

87

JESSIE KEARY
Boy by Flood
Galveston, TX, 1900

Saved from drowning —the wave swept over,wrecked, but rescued.
Loaned a pair of overalls,
he found comfort
as a boy.

88

89

GION DAVIS
Simple Divorces
Oklahoma, receive me
my friends
like a storm breaking
into the embraceof the prairie
into the nights
lasting my whole life
the black road
cut into the golden plain
the black cattle
cut into the golden plain
abandoned telegraph poles
a hundred thousand crosseson the altar of progress
wintering prickly pear leaves
shining like loose silver dollars
the veins of red earthrunning beneath the grass
Oklahoma, receive me
like the Silver Jews DJ nighta billboard boastinga $799 cremation90

your woman in Topeka
you’ve never met
who makes batik
tie-dyed shirts and who is beautiful
the way someone
who will not drive
is beautiful
life is going to takeback everything
it gave to you
every junkyard
longhornevery skeletonized
armadillo
every defunctrattlesnake museum
it takes courage
to do something
as embarrassing
as saying I’d give it up
to get kicked in the nuts
just once
Oklahoma, receive meaway from the oil
derrick-themed picnic area
outside of Dallas
where daffodils are filled91with a billion tiny shardsof glass and if you pick themthe sap can burn your hands
and I picked so manyin New England
like an idiot
from the desert
grinning for the flowers
sprouting up from the cracks
like they thought of itthemselves
no one warned me
it would hurt
so it didn’t
Oklahoma, receive me
Jesus never saw a placethat wasn’t a tablenever saw a nailthat wasn’t waiting
for a hammer
and never felt angry
when they turned on him
together
there are parts of me
I will never see
there are partsof Louisiana
92

that are underwater
there are two boats
and one heart
one restaurantwith a raunchy namelike Cum Pasta
that’s open latethere’s a forestof mesquite trees
full of the warblesof quail and wild
pigs ripping holes
in the dirt and you’ll
never see it
you’re watchingat the snow
turning purple
by the highway
the tractor trailer trucks
black against the gradientsky flying awayfrom you with the velocityof all things and soon
you will eat kaya toastin the city where you live
under two planets

93

who are nearly touching
the way we are

94

JULIAN GUYABECEDARIAN for TRANS JOYApple bottom jeans, boots with the fur, we got the whole club looking at our
Butts shaking in our boy-girl jeans, who
Couldn’t join in the glistening share of our sweat justDancing our way to the heavens, you know, legs
Elastic like bubblegum roped ‘round a perfect finger
From our mouths. We praise each other up and down,
Got each other covered in the glitters of our words, rhinestones—
Had God any other name for it—we’re queerz:
In control of ourselves. Our sex is not shy, we
Jump full-bodied into quantum physics, matter fundamentally,
Keep on cooking chicken dinners for lovers—US—no one better,
Laugh like a stomach can rot if not, full bellies in tight dresses,
Makeup our genders, high cherry cheekbones, boy bone structure.
Not a single one of us can’t cry tonight—
Opening our palms and turning tarot cards,
Plucked unlucky like ducks from the pond of our fortunes:
Queen of Cups. Leona adorns her throne at the edge of ocean,
Reads our love lives for filth, shares stories of our earlySex in parks, cop cars lucky not to spotlight
The way we fucked: trans and not out yet,
Under each other promising out best at pleasure.
Vulnerability is a door open at the end of the95World. Step through and here you are in an
XXX bar with us shoving bills in your hands, telling you
You are the prettiest thing we’ve ever seen,
Zebra-print dress, anointing us with your blessed and hairy chest.

96

JULIAN GUY
I Love You
With a line from Major Jackson

I love you little
wisp of cloudcenter of blue
sky in my home
town, desert
rattlesnake sipping
dust tongue
flicking
like a candle
in a hole. I love
you, big pie
on my birthdaywith whipped cream
homemade limezest sprinkled in:
I am a kid again.
Hello yellow subway
chair unoccupied
tonight, window
underground still
wet with snow.
97Thank you, man
I fished up
from the train’s
metal tunnel,
for finding me
on a Tuesdaywith no work next
and an orchestra
just a few stops
up. I needed to see
your face, holdyour body. I loveyou. Strawberriessliced packed iced
over with frostingin the back kitchenbakery where bored
I wash sheet pans.
Over frozen cherrypies, Lodok tells me
he walked right out
into it, the 2nd
plane crashing.
“How could anyone
do that
to other humanbeings?” Go home,98he told me, see
your mother. Mama,I love you. Baby
Julian, swimmingup through struggle,
I love you. Baby
chickens in the
kitchen box,
I love you. I love
you tender. Red
skirt fullof blackberries, I loveyou. Big wave crashinginto my sleep, the tent,
Alex at the beach,my startled sandals,
all signs saying“drowned” my collapse
into their sunned arms,
good. I love you.
I love you too. Mooncoming up roses,
thrift shopping
Caroline switching tags
pocketing keychainswith Reno written
gold. This happiness99

so hard to come by,
and my life has been so,
been so, been so
good.

100

NOTES“Start with Soap”: Art by Rey Jackson inspired by an original pamphlet from the World
Health Organization on how to properly wash hands.

101

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julian Applebaum (he/him) is an aspiring lawyer and poetry hobbyist from Wellesley,
Massachusetts. He is an incoming graduate student at the University of Oxford, and he currently
works as a legal assistant with the ACLU. He enjoys reading and writing poetry to escape from theoften dreary legal world and to connect with his identity as a gay transgender man.
KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They
authored How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), a chapbook that won
the Saguaro Poetry Prize and an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book in Literature;
Freedom House (Deep Vellum, 2023), a poetry collection recommended by Vogue andAutostraddle, among others; and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), their forthcoming memoir. KB’s
writing is published on Poets.org, inTeen Vogue, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They are a 2023
National Endowment of the Arts Fellow. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Galen David Bunting received his PhD in English in 2023; he is currently a postdoctoral fellow
at Northeastern University, where he teaches writing. He serves as an assistant editor for smoke +mold. You can read his work in the pages of the minnesota review, The Fabulist, The Modernist
Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. You
can follow his work at galenbunting.com, or via his Instagram @pip_istrellus.
Levi Cain is a nonbinary Queeribbean writer from New England. Their work has been publishedin The Slowdown, Arsenal Pulp Press, Room Magazine, Shenandoah Literary Magazine, andelsewhere. Their chapbook, dogteeth., was published by Ursus Americanus Press in 2020. You cankeep up with their work at levicain.wordpress.com, or on their Twitter & Instagram@honestlyliketbh.
Arwyn Carpenter is a queer trans dancer, writer, and teacher. He holds an MFA in Dance from
NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and taught for the Toronto District School Board for 10 years,

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winning awards for excellence in elementary arts education. Arwyn co-runs Flight Festival ofContemporary Dance on Treaty 57, Ontario, and lives on Treaty 13, Tkaronto.
Cee Chávez is the court jester by day and moonlights as your child’s favorite teacher. Their debut
chapbook, Directions for Deliverance, is out now with Bottlecap Press. Their poetry has been
published in Cobra Milk, The Acentos Review, Isele Magazine, East French Press, and elsewhere.
You can keep up with their poetry and watch them be cringe & free on Instagram@highscorebussy.
Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer,
community organizer, and teacher. They are the author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems
and recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as the chapbooks tomake black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie
Scalapino Finalist). Chen is a co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate
Violence Within Activist Communities and is currently a core member of the Massage Parlor
Outreach Project and a Kelsey Street Press collective member. They received fellowships from
Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, the Jack Straw Cultural
Center, the Intercultural Leadership Institute, as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for
Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They teach at the University of Washington Bothell.
www.chinginchen.com.
Samuel Clark graduated with his MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina
Wilmington in 2019. A 2021 candidate for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a recipient of
the LGBTQ+ Writer Scholarship for The Muse & The Marketplace 2019, and a partial scholarship
recipient to the Sundress Academy for the Arts, his work has been published in literary magazines
such as BOOTH, Blood Orange Review, Gris-Gris Literary Journal, The Conium Review,
Artemis Journal, and Shenandoah. He’s currently based in Fort Collins, CO, where he lives with his
adopted cat, Emily D.

103

Charlie Dale (they/them) is a trans-masculine, queer, disabled poet with an MFA from The New
School. They have poems in Water Damaged Paper Anthology, Beyond Queer Words, Revolution
Publication, Lemonboy, The Shallot, and Mulberry Literary. Charlie strives to cultivate liberation
through vulnerability—both on the page and in the world.
River 瑩瑩 Dandelion is a practitioner of ancestral medicine through writing poetry, teaching,energy healing, and creating ceremony. As a poet, he writes to connect with the unseen andunspoken so we can feel and heal. As a healer, he is an energy healing practitioner who helps clientsmove through transition and transformation. River also facilitates creative writing workshops,
where participants connect with their own inner and collective power. A Tin House Resident,
Lambda Literary Fellow, and Kundiman Fellow, River is the author of remembering (y)our light,
an illustrated poetry chapbook recommended by Lambda Literary Review. River's work has been
nominated for Best of the Net (2024), and is published in Best New Poets, The Offing, Bellevue
Literary Review, The Margins, Asian American Journal of Psychology, and elsewhere. He was a2023 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. River has
performed and presented his work globally from the Dodge Poetry Festival to the University ofHavana. To connect, visit riverdandelion.com and IG: @rememberingourlight.
Gion Davis is a trans poet from Española, New Mexico, where he grew up on a sheep ranch. His
poetry has been featured in HAD, MAYDAY Magazine, Sprung Formal, and others. His debut
collection Too Much (2022) was selected by Chen Chen for the 2021 Ghost Peach Press Prize. He
graduated with his MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2019 andcurrently lives in Denver, Colorado. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind & on
Twitter @gheeontoast.
Shane Dedman is a TRANSmedia artist concerned with representational autonomy, archival
fever, and trans resilience. He has been featured in Wussy Mag, Analog Cookbook, Bowery Poetry
Club, the NYC Poetry Festival, the Hambidge Gala, and the Atlanta Biennial. They live in New
York City and enjoy confusing strangers with their gender presentation.

104

n.w. downs lives in chicago with a cat. he is the author of where the men come from throughfifth wheel press and Objects in Mirror, a book of poems about country music stars and what
happens after the dog dies, through Querencia Press.
Kaiya Gordon is a writer and poet from the San Francisco peninsula. Their current researchinterests trace relationships between trans archival practice and poetics. Previously, Kaiya’s work has
been published by Empty Mirror, Triangle House Press, Split Lip Mag, The Wexner Center for theArts, and others. Their favorite karaoke song is “Basket Case,” by Green Day. Kaiya calls on all
readers of this anthology to obstruct empire and genocide however they can, wherever they can,with the understanding that liberation for all oppressed peoples requires a commitment to ongoingrisk. They unequivocally call for a free Palestine and the dismantling of all settler states, including
but not limited to Israel and the United States. Follow Kaiya’s brainworms on twitter @fatiguedfag.
Paxton Grey (he/they) is a transmasculine software developer and poet living in Indiana. His work
has been published in Sundog Lit, Palette Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Hobart, After Dark,and elsewhere. His micro-chapbook the war was released with tiny wren lit (October, 2022) andhis collaborative chapbook COLUMNS will be rereleased in Fall 2023 with fifth wheel press. They
can be found on Twitter @PaxWrites.
Jayce Phantom Grimshaw is a cryptid living in Southern Utah. He makes art, writes things, andhas gotten lost in an abandoned mine shaft only once. His relationship with gender is much like a
YA protagonist coming upon a feral, hurt animal in the woods; what follows is a dangerous
exchange of human compassion and wild wisdom and, eventually, a parting where neither leaves as
the creature they once were. But, honestly, he wouldn't have it any other way.
Julian Guy is a queer and trans writer and educator born in Reno, Nevada, currently residing on
the East Coast. A 2023 Tin House Scholar, his work can be found in Queerlings Magazine,
Lesbians are Miracles, The Adroit Journal, Swamp Pink, Catapult, and more. Find Julian online at
his website, www.julianguy.com, or at the beach pulling up seaweed and oysters from the surf.

105

Mo Hakala is a queer nonbinary poet raised in the South. After a brief stop in the medical field,
they are re-pursuing their passion for writing and teaching while completing their post-bac in
Creative Writing at the University of North Caroline Asheville. Despite having their love of
language dampened by the toils of capitalism for a while, they are exploring expressions of ourbodies as nature and mythologizing ourselves beyond the pain of trauma into spaces of queerness,
community, and abundant joy. When not writing or in class, they can be found working at the
local farmers’ market, in the woods with friends, or at home with their cats.
Andie Jones (they/them) is a neurodivergent, Bi+, chronically ill, nonbinary transmasc emerging
writer nested in Akron, Ohio. Their work attempts to explore the vastness of queer magic and its
connection within and between nature, loves, and self. Andie believes that poetry is the soul’s wayof taking apart its pieces and putting them back together again, for the sake of knowing how they
all fit together in the first place. You can find their work in Anti-Heroin Chic, Beyond the Veil
Press, fifth wheel press, and South Florida Poetry Journal, and you can keep up with their art andadvocacy on socials @andie_the_enby.
Jessie Keary is a trans writer with a corporate day job living in the Midwest. Their poetry can also
be found in Belt Publishing's Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America, as
well as Hooligan Mag Issue #29.
Ari J. Lisner is a poet, writer, and researcher whose writing captures queer intimacy against the
backdrop of New York City. His work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, The Quarterless
Review, Peach Mag, Triangle House, Wonder, GQ, Allure, and others. Ari's chapbook ONESCHTICK PONY was published by Bullshit Lit in 2023. Find Ari on Instagram at@arisbarmitzvah.
Ky Lohrenz is a Texas native living in New York, where they work for the Academy of American
Poets. His poems have appeared in Cleaver, Peach Mag, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere. He
was a semi-finalist for GASHER Magazine’s 2022 Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadside Prize.

106

Rebecca Martin (they/she) is the author of High-Tech Invasions of the Flesh (Bottle Cap Press,2022). They are a queer poet, educator, and roller skater with work appearing in Nimrod
International Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Muzzle Magazine, and others. They received an
Honorable Mention in the 2022 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and are a graduate of Oregon State
University's MFA program, where they were awarded the Graduate Creative Writing Award in
Poetry and served as poetry editor for literary magazine 45th Parallel. They currently live in
Pittsburgh.
Mitch Monroy is a trans Guatemalan poet and multimedia fine artist. They are a coffee technician
by trade, daydreaming about queerness and identity. Their projects explore trans realities acrossborders and this tradition of absence. They were selected as a Tin House 2023 Winter Scholar.
Their past works have been featured in The Polyglot Magazine, the Parrish Art Museum, andAshawagh Hall. They currently reside in Chicago, Illinois. Connect with them on Instagram(@mitch_monroy).
Cari Muñoz is a queer poet and letterpress artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. They
received their BA in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from Arizona State University. They were the 2022-2023
Artistic Development & Research Assistant for the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at
Arizona State University. Their honors include the 2020 Gary Young's Dizikes Award, the Reyna
Grande Scholarship, the 2022 Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award, the Virginia G. Piper
Fellowship for Cultural Exchange in the Literary Arts, and the 2022 Mabelle A. Lyon Award. Theirwork has appeared in such publications as SALT Literary Journal, Queer Rain, and more.
Jackson Phoenix Nash (he/him) is a queer transgender writer from Essex, England. His poetry
and fiction have appeared in Propel, Under the Radar, Rattle, Channel, Baffling Magazine, andmany more. Jackson is a Lambda Literary Writer's Retreat Fellow. He was shortlisted for theCreative Future Writer's Award in 2020 and, in 2022, was selected for Creative Future's Next Up
Development Programme. He has a PhD in Gender Studies with a thesis on trans YA literature.
His debut pamphlet will be published by Little Betty in 2024. Jackson is neurodiverse and dyslexic.

107lee neptune is a jewish and taiwanese writer and dreamer with roots in taipei and ohlone territory(sf bay area). they are co-editing a forthcoming anthology of speculative fiction, poetry, and art,
tentatively titled, intergalactic gaysians. they are rooted in solidarity with the people of palestine andall people who seek liberation from genocide and fascism
Jendi Reiter is the author of the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story
collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and five poetry books andchapbooks, most recently Made Man (Little Red Tree, 2022). Their awards include a Massachusetts
Cultural Council Fellowship for Poetry, the New Letters Prize for Fiction, the Wag's Revue Poetry
Prize, the Bayou Magazine Editor's Prize in Fiction, and two awards from the Poetry Society ofAmerica. Two Natures won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction and was a
finalist for the Book Excellence Awards and the Lascaux Prize for Fiction. They are the editor of
WinningWriters.com, an online resource site with contests and markets for creative writers.
Benjamin Anthony Rhodes is a queer and trans poet living in Northeast Ohio. He holds an
MFA from Kent State University and a BA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Benjamin carries on his mother’s legacy by teaching reading and writing to students of all age levels.
His work can be found in Cleveland Review of Books, Surging Tide, LimpWrist, and Let Me Say
This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology. His poem “Elliot Page Just Came Out as Trans” wasnominated for a Pushcart Prize by Drunk Monkeys in 2022.
Fox Rinne is a poet and groundskeeper living in New York City.
Birch Rosen (they/them) is an agender poet, zinester, and essayist living in the Seattle area on the
unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. They use personal writing to create space for morenuanced trans and nonbinary narratives. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern
Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, From the Waist Down: The Body in Healthcare (Papeachu
Press), and elsewhere. They are the 2022 winner of the King County Library System PoetryContest. Their zines include T&A (Transitioning & Attractiveness), Boobless, and the Trans108

Restroom Rants series. They are currently working on a memoir about their bottom surgery(which made their dick larger but no less of a threat to national security).
jesse smith (they/he) is a queer poet and reviewer from the UK. he released his first pamphlet of
erasure poems, Boy, Found, in 2021, and their poems and reviews are published with Stone ofMadness, just femme & dandy, engendered, and more. he is the founder and poetry reader of thegamut mag (@thegamutmag). find them on twitter and instagram @jessesmithpoet.
Adrian Speth (he/they) is a queer and trans writer currently splitting his time between his rural
Utah hometown and Boston, Massachusetts. When he isn't writing, he is usually collaging or
researching Great Lakes shipwrecks. They are a BFA Theatre Arts student, playwright, and opera
stage manager at Boston University. You can find more of their work on their Instagram,@adrianswrites.
Max Stone is a trans, queer poet from Reno, Nevada. He holds an MFA in poetry and a BA in
English with a Minor in Book Arts and Publication from the University of Nevada, Reno. He wasborn and raised in Reno but has lived in various other places, including New York City, where heplayed soccer at Queens College. Max is passionate about building the literary community in Reno
and frequently organizes poetry readings in town. He is the author of two chapbooks: The Bisexual
Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful (Ghost City Press, 2023) and Temporary Preparations(Bottlecap Press, 2023). His work appears in & Change, fifth wheel press, The Meadow, Bender
Zine, just femme & dandy, Night Coffee Lit, Caustic Frolic, Black Moon Magazine, and elsewhere.
Luke Sutherland is a trans writer and librarian living on Nacotchtank (Anacostan) and Piscataway
land (Washington, D.C.). His work has appeared in smoke + mold, ANMLY, Bright Wall/Dark
Room, MQR: Mixtape, Stone of Madness Press, and more. He was a finalist for the SmokeLong
Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. In his free time, Luke helps organize a trans writing group thataims to build queer literary community in D.C. You can find him on Twitter or Instagram@lukejsuth.

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Cody Tieman is a queer poet from Columbus, Ohio. He is currently working on a collection
inspired by dreams and nightmares. His poetry has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, The
Allegheny Review, and elsewhere.

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REPRINT CREDITS
Ching-In Chen: “Dear O,” The Rumpus and “Contrary,” The Texas Review. Reprinted
by permission of the author.
River 瑩瑩 Dandelion: “parrotfish tranifesto,” The Offing. Reprinted by permission of
the author.
Kaiya Gordon: “BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN VISITS ME AT THE DOCTOR’SOFFICE,” Split Lip Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Jayce Phantom Grimshaw: “praying for phalloplasty,” Peculiar Journal. Reprinted bypermission of the author.
Andie Jones: “SHAME : THE INCONVENIENT TRANSLATOR,” Anthology 5: Do
Not Tap On The Glass (Beyond The Veil Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Paxton Grey: “sunlight falling across a void,” Longleaf Review and “virginia is for [gay]lovers,” Tenderness Lit. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Ari J. Lisner: “END OF AUGUST,” ONE SHTICK PONY (Bullshit Lit, 2023).
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Jackson Phoenix Nash: “Cradling a disaster 30 feet in the air,” Second Chance Lit.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

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Jendi Reiter: “Ariel,” MADE MAN (Little Red Tree, 2022). Reprinted by permission of
the author.
Fox Rinne: “Pre-Op,” Muzzle Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Max Stone: “I’ve got a fake i.d. from nevada and no name,” Sandpiper. Reprinted bypermission of the author.
Luke Sutherland: “Citrus,” Angel Rust. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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RECOMMENDED READING
Our editorial team recommends the following titles with which this collection is inconversation.
Defining Myself: Transmasculine Experience Through Poetry (2016), ed. Michael Eric
Brown & Max Andeo Meyer
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (2020), ed. Andrea Abi-Karam &Kay Gabriel
Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (2013), ed. Trace Peterson
and TC Tolbert
Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (2018), ed. Christopher Soto

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ABOUT THE EDITOR
Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan.
A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today,
Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Books and chapbooks include
Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022);
From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); Little Lenny Gets His Horns(Querencia Press, 2023); and Aphorism | Paroxysm (fifth wheel press, forthcoming). Remi has
been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar. He holds an MFA in poetry from
Bowling Green State University.

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