TWANG

TWANG

a collection of art & writing from transgender, nonbinary & gender non-conforming folks in the south & midwest

Edited by Brody Parrish Craig

Selected by Calypso Jane Selwyn

Selected by Maximiliano Oliver Calabotta

©2020 by Twang Anthology

All rights reserved

Design by Brody Parrish Craig

Text set in HP Simplified

Cover by Maximilano Calabotta

Twang Anthology

Fayetteville, AR

www.twanganthology.org

TWANG

a collection of art & writing from transgender, nonbinary & gender non-conforming folks in the south & midwest

Edited by Brody Parrish Craig

Selected by Calypso Jane Selwyn

Selected by Maximiliano Oliver Calabotta

JUNE ADAM *

June Adam is a person living in Nashville, TN. She has occasionally been a poet and a musician and feels lucky to have had the opportunity.

WANT

I.

I must desire snow: why else seek such bleak balm?

winter ash covers scars from a dreadful fall -

how long til the thaw? how long til clearly every toppled spire reveals itself?

II.

I want to be a worm in mulch, raw & wet, vacant & purposed, here for the season, here for the rain, renewing. all skin, all savagery, cornered only by my own appetite.

III.

if anything in me were settled, I'd write towers, but for now: get down here with me in this mud

SHARE

sidle up to me: we'll share a plate of brussels sprouts roasted (olive oil salt & pepper) stay warm I yearn not to yearn anymore, but to be full of tiny cabbages

NAMING

dwell in me no more little robin; it is June, & I can't keep you here. it's too hot.

the mulch of me (the outside) I am slowly churning into loam, & out of there little seeds to lure you free; & pull you with me (the worm of me) & swallow me so we will both be wings.

KAT ALTIER-JEFFERS *

Kat is a gender-nonconforming artist, writer, and creative based in South Eastern Ohio. They enjoy adding a unique perspective to their work in order to make each piece memorable. Kat’s work is the way they process their thoughts and emotions in a busy everyday life. Their work current revolves around the process of thought, gender, and expression of identity.

CREATIVITY

JULIAN CARTER *

Julian Carter teaches embodiment theory and social practice at the California College of the Arts. Both his scholarship and his creative practice examine pleasure, power, and the bodily ways of being through which people experience self and community belonging. He also dances, draws, and makes social sculture as Principle Instigator of the performance group PolySensorium.

LOBLOLLY PINES

Loblolly pines, telephone poles with the green still on standing tall along the water like the boys who learned to kill for a living. First Kotex went overseas. Then Levis, and the cotton belt got poorer and poorer. Nowhere to go but down, or Parris Island

White-flight schooling: no science labs an indoor rifle range and the boys learned how to use their guns all right yessir: brief flash of freedom between learn to drive and kids to feed

Swallowing hard, holding on, hands and knees digging dampness into soft red duff under pines along the bluff. Springy bed an acre wide. His weight urgent on my back

Sweat tracks branching pleasure in the dirt down my ribs, naked the motorcycle still panting on its side, hair full of needles

afternoon sun radiating lines of gold from behind those stiff ranks and the wide Ocmulgee bubbling past below

CHING-IN CHEN *

Ching-In Chen is author of ‘The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems,’ ‘recombinant,’ ‘to make black paper sing’ and ‘Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters.’ Chen is also co-editor of ‘The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities’ and ‘Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets.’ Born of Chinese immigrants, they have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Callaloo, Can Serrat and Storyknife. In 2018, they co-organized Failure to Con/Form, a series of performances in Houston, Texas featuring trans, genderqueer, intersex and gender-non-conforming writers, performers and visual artists in response to shared stories & conversations with Houston-area trans & gender-non-conforming folx. www.chinginchen.com

The following poems “Seller” & “South in Hundreds” were previously published in Snail Trail Press.

SELLER

we mangled our blue room uniforms

I’ve always been here while you road train with wear.

delicate greens pretended to be nobles still had my hidden beneath table wares

To be honest, a line where I’ve never gotten off. Sometimes wanted to hide in altars or rooms with no shade. Only foolish came to sing. Only reckless sold skin.

to be nobles we blued our green uniforms delicated our wares still rode my skin a line

I’ve never gotten off hiding no shade to sing no reckless to wear

I’ve always been waiting for you by monument.

To be honest, I’ve never been in elephant or gears. Back home, watered shades down and only wore this uniform on weekends down the street. we often hid our skins at monuments to gear a song for shade to alter a foolish line no easy thing

Always been rolling up table bits, crumbling into stew. When you chew, don’t forget I wasn’t in street singing. never been back-up girl. shimmed my way home from work and earned my own ride.

we didn’t forget to chew a street for stew fish king to market today to be honest, I never thought you’d bend to pressure. never thought you’d crankdown gears. Biting down each time, don’t forget earning our own rides by crumbling

hidden before I saw shade.

to be honest, three women came out cart to sell lean vinaigrette. So much water

thought you’d bend. Stood for six sun hours asking for bites before others finished selling. I will not go down empty I will not go down empty even if I have to sell my own skin.

SOUTH IN HUNDREDS

one hundred.

one hundred seeds gone awry. [red morning.] you wanted a flat piece of land so we visited. don’t know how the ground received my lit white eyes. [clamshell gone break.] I felt cool and dull underneath.

~ she gave me the other word for wild. ~ I thought too that there must be other ways leading to darkest color. all universe full before you set each candle soft with mouth and war. only this small circle of containment guaranteed from contaminant, new growth.

~~ no more stories from bending. in their tiny units, small certain houses, someone with cut eyes pushes off. in different city, you breathe, grow back lichen, bring on flood.

in the new days, we demand all visitors be named worship in incubator fire.

two hundred.

next black morning, risking from skin, you wanted a rising and flaking. [still trace above ground, sliver I come up in forest.] our desire stayed the surface. They had to allow movement, you said.

[pour out water, handmade cranked down for next dreamer.] Your skin mark. a flexible break unconcerned with storms. [what does it feel like to soak wine past border where everything eats?]

~ no one looks to see a mismatched building, rigid with memory. in the old town, we banish memorials frequently. ~

no sharp answers to questions no one asked, no neutral upsweep, no flame. if you swirl, it’s lost on her anyway.

~~ after a few times, i do arrive to tell you – these memories not stories. watching facts straighten out. not the feeling precise, not strained passages of body.

we open gaps, test by tongue after Tuesday’s drying of the creek.

three hundred.

Tough of your cheek, ignoring what was coming. I didn’t ask or knock. didn’t know what to say when you shut the door. [chilling sour liquid, humming rib at cup’s ridge.] Bitters in the incinerator.

~ sometimes mobs. No corrections or adjustments needed to scatter. I don’t like the sturdy fat grain or the fruit tree. ~ she made it clear she doesn’t celebrate royalty, no respect for any kaleidoscope.

~~ i don’t want together to bracket our thoughts without fluid. not to compress manythronged throat into thin sliver. to be devoured is to clear windshield.

all wanting to preserve half-life before expire.

four hundred.

a rat taken by surprise. [my favorite mouth again.] I never did learn how to make dark liquid or to hate your brethren. blockade of grains. [when night flees, nothing enters tunnel, even bitesize.] You did learn what it took to melt your own shell, grow it back to ebony.

~ you don’t come from where I grow. to trick, toss down the dull pennies, the ugly bricks. nose full of last year’s rent. don’t celebrate without decompressing sugar. ~

~~ they don’t see many-hooded, wipe lenses from her neck. i wish i remembered to show up to fill house.

you alone said, let them be, long live pufferfish, leave feet planted.

five hundred. cages caked with light. [you search for me, knew counting sun would have kept me.]

How to disappear with the scatter of a bulb. we did not form any bridge. [I write a letter if I make paper.] A morning blue like grass. a disconnected skin from waiting tissue. [If I get upright.] How to ask for the simplest thing. these ramp remains – you tried to shield me from the sight. [no houses in sight.] Time to level the ground, unpeel light. no awestruck survivors.

[growing up a sugar-creamed world nobody could afford.] Sometimes I don’t wish for anything.

I want to see the whole world.

[Staying meant skipping breakfast to preserve lovely mouthbite.]

~ don’t make space for me. I strip bare to bald ear and weak fist. I want the past with all its anchors like a sunrise. ~

we’ve arrived late in the game. who is left but the hardiest soldiers weathered down and waiting past your time. Nothing left but press the light-hearted valve and fly.

~~

erect temporary installation, empty bowls of choke, watery women turned to stone, all others turned up on knees, no more questions.

not much to eat but cardboard, we force down handfuls, one sip of sweetfire, one cram of less than wood.

you never do what crowd desires, whether marigold or nightlife, whether holy or honest.

CODY-ROSE CLEVIDENCE *

Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of BEAST FEAST and Flung/ Throne, both from Ahsahta press, and Aux Arc/ Trypt Ich, forthcoming from Nightboat, as well as several handsome chapbooks. They live in Winslow, Arkansas with their medium-sized but lion-hearted new dog, Birdie

HOLY SPIRIT GTFO

“sleep, shepherd, it doesnt matter where” Jacques

Dupin

who has taken me back and forth behind th clover who has split th soft lip of fog at dawn who has spoken words into my mouth who has put his tongue against th salty eyelids of morning, curséd tongue, sweet tongue, mouth of corn-silk, one snake, dumb tongue of morning cursed th genitals between th legs holy spirit who has begged forgiveness from th small birds just now starting in th trees around

holy spirit you are welcome here

that which was once seamless, now has a hem

when we felt that we were promised sun, and were given none when we felt th salt wind blow up from th gulf I, Agamemnon, standing, as I like to do, in a place surrounded by th “whole world” on this cliff there's a fucking ache in it my dude, it will settle on th ache in you I can smell it on th air I know it— I'm telling you— because I'm yr friend

put that edge on it sharp like th devil said.

fuck Saint and Paradise and Cardinal and Calvary

fuck Vision and Holy and Void

fuck down deep in th heart where th deep waves are fuck everything in th sky. th magpies bend. the grackles are all eyes. I do not forgive th wind.

a small death takes place in th heart of each tree.

holy spirit you are welcome here

& some, for me, bright star, radiant this night this night escapes us, more bud than fruit, single flame, most remain each day each thing remains, whe re I have placed it,

th dead body of th dead snake writhing on th table for hours, its head in a coffee can nearby

I can still feel its body moving, muscley in my grip, for hours after if u pinch, & squeeze, u cn milk th venom out later, it rots in that jar because th lid was bad the rotten head of the rotten snake in the rotten venom of its rotten night holy spirit u r welcome here

whose skies is this today and after when I have to go why is it that each day we make again a man who are you kissing, in that room w all th windows and stand in different postures, in th constellation of ourselves yr body was of th place.

from my mount and serpent there

my ankle, my heart, my nonsense, free me body of earth, causality and generation

still wounded, dog, get down, my knees, alloy and circumscision and anguish, having taken to th hot steel over th knife, gemstone and masculinity and prayer, where my lips are, tonight, what is the story— what is the name of th knife?

I'm nervous about something [th body's involuntary th bodys involuntary—]

there might have been an ambush in it it might have been hidden in a bush which might, also have been burning o get out of there no voice of god, no prayer, just “the thing itself” : { }

yr body was of th place— [but which was th body, and which was th place?]

--that which was once greedy of th grace and th graceless alike that which was once greedy of th light close yr eyes o, man if I could only find a place to get thrown violently as if from two (2) horses as if [] disequilbrium of cities & forests, horn and cornicopia of man causeway and viaduct and great bore-holes bored under th highways whatever love encompases-- anounces distains

it is like as if it is a living thing I was afraid and I was afraid along th thin edge of grace where grace bleeds into a new and different grace it was just the edge that I was on it is just the edge that I am on

holy spirit it is with a heavy heart that I take into my mouth

make th grace stand in th cold of itself trembling in th grace of itself nuthatch on th winter bark upsidedown in th cold grace hard nipples in th kitchen little winter berries in th feeders just enough

a motiff a motive a pattern premonition dust -dust-dust -dust— we are incapable of sin

holy spirit you are welcome here

1st communion, February 17th 2019

“Idon'tthinkIcouldmakethisdescisionbeforegod”

ublasphemeofdesire|u“blaspheme”/“desire”

thethinlineofhorizonwhereuare

“absconded” /“inambush”

“sincewe'vegotnoplace2place”

Iwasunspeakabletothlangugaeofthis

holyspirityouarewelcomehere

CASS CONDRAY *

Cass Condray is a FtM freshman at Tulane University, born in South Louisiana who practices art & likes to focus on issues pertaining to identity as an Indigenous person as well as a transgender man.

MNI WICONI

DYSPHORIA BLUES

HEATHER COSTELLO *

Heather Costello is a poet and speculative-fiction writer from rural Washington County, Arkansas. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Geology from the University of Arkansas. When not writing she enjoys playing strategy videogames, watching birds, and learning about higher math.

my hand groped curious at unliving stone now it is translucent, bodiless i have lain seventeen years in damp earth i have built myself by increments: an elm shrouded in cicadas’ din emphemeroptera in a dying stream distended crane fly maggots an arch without its keystone

betheaquifer,i tell myself, dealgentlywithallthings,but what is more other to me than my own self?

i sat upon the lakeshore, binoculars around my neck, the sun in haze over the mountains, red and dull and spotted looking more like Jupiter than the sun.

i looked out, past the darting waterbeetle backs of coots to where a pied -billed grebe rose undisturbed from dark water: it was the lake's yellow eyes, a witness to summer's benthic decay.

if i could lie a night in those depths If i could emerge shrug off the clinging exoskeleton of me scatter it like dust

i would howl my name to the still hot air until the jewel of my body would give out a fragile thing:

flesh of opal poisonwhite tears wings

NICK CREEL *

Nick Creel is a genderqueer writer and multimedia artist from Mississippi. Currently, they are working and studying as an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Their writing interests include visual poetry, experimental poetry, and interactive literature. Their work has been featured in, and is forthcoming in, The Winnow Magazine, petrichor, Best Buds Collective COVID-19 Relief Anthology, Déraciné Magazine, poke, and Perhappened, among others. You can find them on Twitter @toofyMaw.

Artemis and Athena are both virgins, but in different senses. The distinction requires sentences to explain in English, but the ancients managed in one word: something akin to perception. Pining for Artemis’ hymen, the potential of something, seen through evil thoughts of men. One god unsuccessfully raped Athena, his seed decorating woolen cloth, birthing the royal homunculi from cum rag. Unlike Arethusa, no god transmuted my body into water out of pity. My body was not forceful. I was never the mortar; pinned against the pestle's curve, grind me into meal for bread.

One learns what a Chair is not in its use, but when it's broken. Kneeling by the bed, I folded my hands, rested elbows on the edge, give me a sign. Every human is made from His image. An image's truth can only be discerned when compared to reality. I sat in the chair, my lap weighted down by Grandfather's tome. The chair could not suffer the weight of the text or it's implications regarding Life. The chair is broken.

JOANNA DAVIDSON *

Joanna Imogen Davidson is a queer, transgender woman, a southern belle with a love of hats living in Carrboro, NC. A poet and playwright, her poems have appeared in the anthologies Witness: Appalachia to Hatteras and Heron Clan IV. The former Poetry Editor at Treehouse literary magazine, she works as a software developer and part time library assistant. Currently working on her first chapbook. http://www.shrikesong.com

SOME STATE SYMBOLS

The state bird knows nothing of opioids but a friend, cardinal among users snared by cravings, his feathers fall like melting death into spoons held over funeral pyres. Spoon to tube to vein. A plott hound, years past vanity, maunders by in a pill box hat, half-hooked bra daring gravity, eyes beaded from the hunt for oxies. She's unleashed from any job and wandering through town, hasn't seen her son since he got out of jail and started a vape shop two counties over.

The state reptile hides its head like politicians, pulls back into shell hardened to their lives milked from veins, livelihoods milked from counties, antipathy milked like the state beverage from utter despair, moralizing on syringe exchanges neighbors have zoned out.

The state flower barked commands as we tried to revive the 48-year-old man who died outside the methadone clinic. Run up on the curb in his red Chevy pickup, another client grabbed a ball-peen hammer from his toolbox, smashed the window to reach lips blue as his jeans, blue as his short-sleeve shirt we tore to start CPR, blue as the Carolina sky we were under. I used the Naloxone injectors I brought, focused on dogwood petals falling to not cry, not be a southern belle that tolls his passing. We've already paid enough toll on this road. The state rock is granite.

The state song cheers "Hurrah! Hurrah! The good Old North State!" The state toast boasts of a land near and dear, blessed and best, but I think it apropos that the wildflower is a lily; the state tree sheds needles.

FRIEND LOVER WOMAN I AM

I wake with mists hanging like meringue on mountains caught alone in the diffidence between paths abdicated and almost, between eating the moon and swallowing her truths. I'm a Virgo with a Taurus moon and a rising hemline the more I get comfortable with my own body, devour the squeamishness my body evokes in you.

I'm an auntie, a southern Appalachian girl, mom-friend, queer transgender bestie, cat lover, hat lover, library nerd. Yes, I spell qute with a Q and how you might taste permeates my dreams, but I'm oblivious to affections sent that halt at the edge of my woods.

Under a strawberry moon, the rain got bored and left mists to rise up from around Cumberland Gap. I greet pine, cypress, birch slanted by the mouth of the tunnel through mountain stone like guys vaping outside a club half-drunk and swaying in the wind. They know my birthday approaches and ask What do you do with old fruit?

One summer I supplicated Beelzebub with altars on my nightstand of apples rotting after dad commented on my 12-year-old sister's breasts joked about bug bites and I, first puberty flat, slept with my shirt off.

AIMES DOBBINS *

A. A. Dobbins (they/them pronouns)

Undergraduate @ Indiana University Bloomington Queer Arts & Humanities BA, individualized Major Program Class of 2019

Mediums: silk-screen [print media]

performance

sculpture

digital

FAGGOT FLOWER: KISS MY ASHES

BINARY LOVE

RORY EGGLESTON *

Oscillating wildly between studying ecology and throwing her energy into theatrical and creative pursuits, Rory is currently finishing a Masters in behavioral ecology. She acts in the podcast Aqua Marianas and has been creating the folklore audio drama Modern Fae since 2017. She loves birds, reading, and procrastinating. This is her first published story.

THE GIRL AND THE GOLEM

There is a story in my family, passed down from parents to children for hundreds of years. It tells of a young girl my great, great, great, great, great someone or other whose town was overtaken by an invading army. The invading forces conscripted the citizens to house and feed the conquering soldiers. The soldiers' orders were to be cruel and unyielding, and soon the girl's mother, who was a skilled healer, was overwhelmed with starving and injured townsfolk. Before long, the girl had to assist. She, too, was knowledgeable in the medicine and KabbalahMa'asit , or Practical Kabbalah, necessary to heal them. One night, one of the soldiers overheard the mother as she was reading the Torah. They dragged her from the house, and the girl was left alone full of sadness and rage. And so it was that she turned again to magic.

In the dead of night, she disguised herself as a young soldier boy and snuck down to the river, the only place where mud was readily available. All night she worked, pushing and shaping the mud into the shape of a person, with thick tree -trunk legs, and an emotionless face. She wrote a shem , a variant of the true name of God, on a piece of parchment, and placed it in the mouth of her creation. The mud figure shivered, and she took a step back.

The Golem stood and turned toward her. It saw the grief and rage upon her face and knew what it must do. It marched into town with the red light of dawn, and there was a dreadful silence. When she could bear it no longer, the girl walked slowly back to the town square, and found, instead of the piles of dead bodies that she had expected, the Golem holding the struggling general. He had been a terrible man, and most of the soldiers had never wanted to go to battle or leave their families in the first place. The townsfolk had taken their weapons, and now, with the girl and the Golem in the lead, they were told to leave. For their

actions, though coerced, could not be forgiven. The Golem threw the general to the departing army, who put him in chains.

With its work done, the girl took the Golem back to the river to watch the sunset. As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, she removed the shem , and her guardian returned to the mud from which it had been made. My grandma and a unts and mom all assure me that all the women in our family can turn to the KabbalahMa'asitin times of great need, even though most of Judaism frowns at its use.

****

I've never been sure what the moral of the story is, really, and honestly the things that always intrigued me most about it were how the girl disguised herself as a boy to sneak past the soldiers and how the magic could one day come to our aid. Maybe (okay, definitely) it has something to do with the fact that I feel like I've been wearing a similar disguise for my entire life, and wondering whether I’m girl enough for the magic to come to me.

I lie in bed, thinking about this story, because today's the day. The day I become a woman. My bat mitzvah . Pretty much everyone else except m y parents and rabbi think that it's the day that I'm going to become a man, but that fantasy will be demolished in just a few short hours. I yawn and rub the sleep from my eyes. Throwing the covers off, I shiver. That'sAprilinMinnesota,I think while shuffling into the bathroom and avoiding my reflection in the mirror. Best to put off the dysphoria for as long as possible. It's been over a year since I came out to my family, and somehow it has only gotten worse. At least I'm on blockers now.

The outfit my mom bought for me hangs at the end of my bed. It's a forest green dress with

embroidered nightingales, thick black tights. Next to it, my new tallit , multi-colored doves adorning its edges. I glance down at the oversized hoodie that I slept in and sigh.

When I finally emerge, my family is already eating a light breakfast.

"There h-she is! " My dad says, placing a bowl of yogurt and fruit on the kitchen table and turning to give me a hug.

"The dress looks good," my mom says absent-mindedly, glancing up from the paper she's grading.

"It'd look better with the breastforms,” I mutter, sitting down at the table.

My mom sighs, “You're thirteen, Ciaran. You don't need them, okay? Plenty of other girls are late bloomers, too.”

I huff, but can't help but smile. It's one of the first times she's included me automatically with “the girls.”

"Does this mean I can finally call you my sister?” Rachelle is bouncing eagerly in her seat. I giggle.

"After the service, yeah, just, let's keep it a secret until then, okay?" I hold out my pinky and she grabs it with hers.

"Okay, pinky swear,” she says solemnly.

I force myself to finish breakfast. After that is all a waking dream. Pulling on our coats and boots. Tramping through the snow and into the car. The quick drive to the synagogue.

All the while, I'm tightly gripping the tiny clay figure in my pocket. I made it in art class last week, when I started thinking about the old story. Out of the car, into the synagogue. No one else but Rabbi Tina and Cantor Rob are here yet, which allows me to release the breath I've been holding. The delicate folded paper birds that I made for decorations are already lining the pews. Food is ready in the back, for when the service ends.

"Ready for the big day, bud?” Cantor Rob claps me on the shoulder and I wince.

"Um, yeah, ready as I'll ever be,” I try to make shrugging off his hand seem casual. He means well, and at least he didn't act surprised about the dress.

“Let's give her some space, Rob, yeah?” Rabbi Tina comes over, “Susan, Cliamain, Rachelle, can I have a moment with Ciaran?”

My parents smile at me and Rachelle gives me a hug, and I do my best to smile back. I can see the tightening in my mom 's eyes that shows it came out more as a grimace. They go back to make sure the programs are in order.

“How're you feeling? I read your speech, it's really great, hun.” Rabbi Tina is smiling and reaches out hesitantly to hug me. I lean into her embrace without thinking. She gets it, where Rob didn't.

“Thanks, Rabbi. I'm...a little worried, honestly, but the only way out is through, right?” I shrug out of my coat awkwardly and put it on the pew at the very front.

“Right!” She gives my shoulder a gentle pat, “Would you like to go over any passages with me before people arrive?”

I shake my head, not trusting myself to open my mouth anymore, and she nods.

The half-hour before services begin goes by agonizingly slowly, and I spend the time pacing what passes for the synagogue's green room. I tap my little clay figure in rhythm with my steps. Eventually, I hear the stream of voices taking seats at the pews and my heart freezes up. It's a Reform congregation, everyone is pretty open-minded. But I invited some classmates too, Brendan and Dana, and I don't know what's going to happen when they see me, the first time I show myself as the girl I am in public. If they, or anyone else, react badly, I don't know what I'll do. I've spent so long trying to make sure that no one knows who I am, it gives me vertigo to think about everyone suddenly knowing.

Rabbi Tina speaks over the hubbub, “Thank you all for being here, on this very special day in Ciaran's life…” And so it begins.

I go numb. Breathe . Rabbi Tina is leading the opening prayers of the service. Breathe . My grandma, mom, and cousin are reciting the first Torah blessings. Breathe .

“And now, Ciaran, will you please come out for your aliyah?” Rabbi Tina smiles at me as I walk by. My mouth is dry. As soon as people can see me, there is muttering. I do my best to drown it out

as I recite the blessings before reading the Torah, and then move on to my Torah portion. As I fall into the chanting, my heartbeat slows. Everything is going to be okay. I move through my Torah and Haftarahportions with ease, though I avoid looking at the crowd in front of me. Finally, we come to the time for speeches. I'm going before my parents. I clear my throat and look up.

Many smiles and expectant eyes. A few blank looks and frowns.

“Some of you may have noticed that I'm wearing a dress,” I begin, and there are a few nervous titters, “Some of you may have also noticed that the programs say ‘bat’ instead of ‘bar.’

This is because I am not the boy most of you believe me to be. I'm a girl. I'm transgender, and today is the day I become a woman.”

Some of the frowns grow deeper, and there is more muttering, plus some smatterings of applause. I blush, and push forward, telling everyone about how my Torah portion recounts how Moses relied on Aaron to help him speak out for their people to Pharoh, and how my Haftarahportion details Jeremiah's protection of the land from poor use. I say how this is important to me because I'm a queer kid, just barely finding her own, and I'm lucky to have friends and family who will stick up for me, just as I want to

someday stick up for the environment.

And then Brendan's dad stands up, takes his son by the shoulder, and they begin walking down the pew. My hand clenches on the paper and I stammer to a halt. Everyone looks between me and the clearly angry man and his cowering son. And then Dana gets up with her parents, refusing to look at me.

I want to curl up, I want to run away, I want to take back all I have said, to save myself this sadness and fear. I should never have worn the dress, I should never have put on makeup, I shouldn't have told my family and Rabbi Tina who I am, I should have just kept my disguise, my armor, up and let life wash around me. Anything would be better than this.

I should just be a boy. Whyisthatsohard? If I could have just kept up the act, it would have protected Protected.

A girl and her Golem. Only, mine isn't made of mud. It is made of all of the tricks I played to keep my girl-ness, my real-ness, hidden. It is the thing that shielded me from everything, and turned my life into a bearable haze. It is the internal programs that I had written for the first twelve years of my life to keep up the appearance that I was what everyone thought I was. And I don’t need it anymore. The little clay figurine that I am holding behind my back crumbles in my fingers.

I raise my voice, “I am sorry that you feel the need to leave. If you want to talk ,” the door closes behind them, “You have my number.” I take a deep breath.

I'm crying as I finish my speech, and my family embraces me as they pass by to give theirs.

After the service, when everyone's eating and talking and laughing at the reception, Rachelle runs up to me.

"Can I call you my big sister now?” She asks in a breathless voice.

I smile and ruffle her hair, “Yeah, Rachelle, I'd like that.”

I think I understand the story, now.

CORALINE GRAY *

Cora Gray writes poetry, fiction, song lyrics, and screenplays for comics and films. She’s an avid LARPer and dice and paper (and board) gamer, and she has dabbled in game design and development. She holds an MFA in Writing for Entertainment Media until her student loan provider decides to repo her degree. She loves storms, moonlight, and magic, and she is a self-proclaimed hopeful romantic.

UNFINISHED

Then there are nights like this when my skin actually seems to fit, and I feel more at home with myself. One of the girls, despite my odd packaging. We talk of paintings unfinished, and I resist the urge to peel the paint off my face until I am a blank canvas once more. A work in progress, I say, cannot know its own destination until it has been reached. The very nature of being in transition implies a state of impermanence, a sense of fluidity that blends like watercolors and blurs the edges of ones perspective.

I know that my experience is no different than that of any woman, that all of us are just as critical, just as programmed to feel out of place, regardless of our looks.

Joining the sisterhood of the disenfranchised is an odd form of acceptance. Funny how our flaws unite us. So we smooth over each other's rough edges, add flakes of gold, admire our brush strokes, and cover our imperfections while we wait for the paint to dry.

KENAN INCE *

Kenan Ince is a queer, Turkish-American mathematician, poet, and organizer from Texas living on occupied Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute and Ute territory (so-called Salt Lake City). Their work is forthcoming in The Iowa Review and was featured in Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, and the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America, among others. They are the recipient of scholarships to the Antioch Writers’ Workshop and Lambda Literary Writers’ Retreat and winner of the Utah Pride Center’s Poetry and Prose Contest.

CHICXULUB K ÖÇEKÇE / PIONEER SPECIES

Köçekçe("koo-check-cheh")weresongswrittenaboutthird-gender/crossdressingOttomandancerswho wereconsidered "effeminateboys".

Like those jellyfish that swell with future oxygen, I live into my gender, balloon constantly rising into atmosphere I'm sure I can't breathe. I wish to be the exact opposite of those moths that live on caterpillar-digested food for their week- long lives. I hope I never stop digesting myself, staying hungry. In my new wool tights I feel foreign in my natural habitat, first mammal to walk meteor-scorched plains still gray with dead possibility. I don't know what numbed out these genera in me since three-year-old Kenan danced to Tarkan in my father's Texas home swirling my babaanne's silks like a Köçekdancer. I still hope to unearth those gracile Ottoman bones, çarpare castagnettes and davuldrums, any reminder of those who came before. I will make soil from rock for others to grow, live on sun alone. I will remake my own DNA from my people's nitrogen, secret it in stromatolites in the western Tethys. When my beard digs its rhizomes into my skin, breaking my soft Ottoman face into fine filaments, I am ruined for contouring, according to the drag show tip jar, yet I feel their filaments breaking down the rock of my gender certainty. I consume myself again, fossilize myself for the next extinction.

TRICKLE-DOWN THEORY

Here in Texas when we turn on the water the oil creeps through the hose into our cars' waiting tanks. Our showers are always hot and thick and our skin glistens for days.

Molly next door drinks a bottle

How can you say we're running

straight. Our morning coffee pours slow but powers us for days. out of fuel when the oil rains from the skies? It coats our crops with its thick black milk. Here in Texas we've prayed for rain so long we dance in the streets when the black downpour starts. Our congressmen write bills to praise Valero and Exxon.

I think we asked for it, these forty days of rain. We asked for it for not having a summer house to pack up for when the floods come. Or for being born on the wrong side of the levees. When they open and the water beads together in the widening anything more beautiful. And we think a clean slate. It's almost refreshing, of pride as fireworks explode

like a theme park forever,"

crack, we think we've never seen maybe this is what we need, like the first wellings over our kids' heads. "It's we tell them when they ask about heaven. "Like Ha waii. Never drops below sixty."

We'll sit at the beach all day and watch the Earth below as an invisible hand distills away the impure until all that is left of humanity is our constituent

carbon. It is all we will ever give back to the world. It is all the generosity we contain

CANESE JARBOE *

Canese Jarboe is the author of vo/luptuary (YesYes Books, 2022) and the chapbook dark acre (Willow Springs Books, 2018). Born and raised on a soybean farm in southeastern Kansas, they currently live and teach in Milwaukee where they are a PhD student in creative writing at University of Wisconsin.

GUMPTION

Hair slicked-back, hard water I have been a weather vane for most of this small, aluminum rooster spinning Secret Stetson cologne (I put back with my father's things What if there is no wind

What if there is no wind

BOBWIRE

BOB WIRE, BOBBED WIRE, BARB WIRE, BARBED WIRE,

I am also loosening myself from this field. We are weary among countless and minor green brains. You, in all your ite rations, are grief. You, in this iteration .

How many years to pass through in a swimsuit unscathed? i

ALEX KIME *

A transdisciplinary writer, teaching artist, and facilitator, alex was born and raised in and around Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are the recipient of the 2018 Michael R. Gutterman Award in Poetry, Highest Honors in Creative Writing & Literature for their manuscript of poems entitled trans-corporeality in 2017, 2nd Place in the 2017 Current Magazine poetry contest, and the 2015 Jeffrey L. Weisberg Memorial Prize in Poetry. They received their Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan as a National Community Scholar and with Yoseñio V. Lewis, they are the co-author of the chapter “Place, joy, and self: trans justice and community organizing work” in Social Work and Healthcare with Trans and Nonbinary Individuals and Communities (Routledge, 2020). Their poetic work is forthcoming and/or has appeared in Anomaly, Current Magazine, Café Shapiro, the Michigan Daily, the Uncommon Core: Contemporary Poems for Learning and Living anthology, and others.

THE GROVE

in the knuckle of the stolen Michigan mitten there is a path between the trees

across & past the land bridge, up & around the sandy hill, minding your step through the ferns & roots you'll come to where sun punctures

into dapple. gave it the verdant name I did for the faerie courts it seemed ripped from, solstice incomplete without us.

in their wayward tradition, we had decided the new game was to get lost. I was one of the few spun around,

who got to find myself before the adults ruined the dance. there is a me that wanders

in those trees still, looking to the sun & the sparkle of lake filling the space between the trunks young-footed & sure of a path.

"BAKLAVA"

except dad's mom called the sweet softer, the wuhin baklawa, the mouth-roof-tongue-touch in buct-lay-wah her only assistant out of all the children, we damp ragged the phyllo while clarifying the butter. hummingbirded a bottle of rose water from a market she does not live close to, that we bring with us to Mid-Michigan. the sense memory is incandescent: walnuts & sprinkling sugar, brushbuttering the dough gold & slick, either sedimented tray or rolled together when we made fingers. my brother looks the spitting image of her son, with the jet hair they share & he makes adoption jokes but not today when I was her helper–a pair of her own arms.

2 grandma I must confess this father's day a day from your son's birthday (& certainly still too close to your passing)

I did not have time to do anything but buy it from a restaurant I still see every detail of that kitchen sunset & unpretentious decorations. at this moment, I still haven't told them I'm not a son, will never be a father we got essentially the same gifts for the one above us in succession & grandma on the highway back today your son asked me about sex & gender in the way he knows how as quantitative & my answers of complication did not quite satisfy his desire for boolean. I don't know what that means beyond communication being hard like always. he is trying. it was around your table that your descendants reminded each other of brood lineage so tangled & here & fully yours

THEY/THEM, A HISTORY

normative masculinity & I sometimes meet to fuck in a public bathroom. each time I feel seventeen again

not like the movie with zac efron but more in terms of the internal clanging, exhibitionist eggshell shards of a knuckled anxiety, running

I only half believed myself when one day I'mleavingslips into my head. immediately he tastes it on me,

cuffclenches my wrists harder; as if anything like this would ever be easy. &where,exactly, wouldyougo?

he breathes, soft & sure of my fear, my deference.

smelling the light on the other side of the cracked window, it was a game of truth or death.

everywhere I exhale as I scatter, dandelion unpulled, entire & expanding into cosmology of horizon.

a younger me would not have had this answer; misery knows how well I stayed.

where am I not anymore?

ANH ĐÀO KOLBE *

Anh Đào Kolbe is a social work therapist currently working at a residential treatment facility for adolescent sexual abusers. AĐK has been a social justice activist and mentor to at-risk youth for over thirty years. As a published photographer, AĐK uses their creative talents to educate others about privilege, oppression, and fragility.

JESS LEWIS *

Jess is a designer, writer, and facilitator who was born in a log cabin in Shelton Laurel. Often speculative and always centered on healing, their stories ask the question: how do we heal? They facilitate myriad workshops that recontextualize peoples narratives or help people envision queer futures. The are an organizer for The Outer Dark, a podcast and symposium focused on supporting creators of weird fiction.

excerpt from BLOOD ON THE MOON

The last few rays beat on my forehead and shoulders. I wanted to be burned up by it. The others filled their lungs with burning. We all sank down deep into the feeling.

By dusk we settled, leaning back against the wood and ties and rocks with our feet in the cool grass. Our bodies soaked in the burning sun's last light and the stars' first light.

Jenna spoke.

"I'm going to cut my hair.”

Everyone turned. Jenna's father once threatened to kick her out if she ever cut her hair – it hadn't been touched by a pair of scissors since she was born. The next day at school she had a bruise circling her arm. She was fiddling with her split ends now.

I took her hand.

Nick touched her knee.

Kayla put a hand on her shoulder a nd reached into the bag beside her. Her eyes were fire and her voice was whispered rage.

“Let's fucking show them.”

She summoned a small switchblade from her purse and I retrieved a spare hairband from my wrist.

Jenna blinked, then smiled, staring at the way the edges of the hairband and knife caught in the moon's light. She took my hairband and tied her hair at the nape of her neck.

Jenna stood, and Kayla put a hand on her shoulder to steady herself. Jenna stared at the moon, as if she were focusing on its glowing craters, the lines of tree limbs against it, the ringed halo surrounding it –anything but herself.

The blade shimmered against the low ponytail.

“Wait," Jenna said. She turned to Nick, who held the end of the blunt. He handed her the rest of it without a word. She stared at it a moment before putting it to her lips and breathing in. After exhaling, she dropped it and crushed it under her boot.

“Okay?" Kayla said, softer now.

Jenna bit her lip and nodded.

Kayla cut.

Jenna gasped. The hairband slipped from her hair, nothing to hold it in place, and fell to a tuft of grass. Little hairs fluttered down with it, nestling deep within the longest blades.

“It's so light," she said, half-there.

Her long fingers twined through her hair feeling the rough sharp edges of the places her hair was cut.

“I feel so light,” she said, her face brightening, and looked around to us.

Her eyes stopped at the pile of hair at our feet.

“Woah.”

She knelt down to it and ran her fingers through it for a few seconds, feeling its weight. Breathing out slowly, she picked up as much of the mound as she could and ran over to the river, trailing long strands that fluttered away into the mountains on the wind.

Standing at the edge of the river, she looked over and her eyes grew wide. Her body was a rich dark outline against the moon's light hitting the distant trees and water. Who knows what she saw in the water, but she stared it down for a few minutes as we all watched on, entranced and unsure of what we were witnessing.

I focused on Jenna, on the beauty she might be witnessing, on the release she might be feeling. Suddenly she reeled back and hurled the mound into the river with something that resembled a scream.

CASSIE MIRA *

Cassie Mira is an interdisciplinary artist, technologist, and curator. Her practice explores human interaction and transitional experiences with mash-ups, assemblages, poetry and performance. Cassie Mira received her BA in Art and a minor in Computer Science from Sam Houston State University.

Day 2

The Everyman: A Wonderful Package

Jimmy Stewart "Action Figure", peach schnapps, butter bell, tissue, soft packer, cardboard box

Peach

Package delivery

He rides himself

Flagging through our town Hoopla.

VERZAMELINGETJE 2

PEYTON MONROE *

Peyton

is a trans man who grew up in the south & later moved to New York for college.

GRANDIOSE IN NEW YORK

KIKI NICOLE *

kiki nicole (they/them) is a Black, Queer, and Non-binary multimedia artist and poet currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina by way of Oregon and Maryland. Find them online at kikinicole.com

BIRTH OF VENUS AS A BOI

Out of sea foam, they emerged A coral reef of pronouns gasping Their gut adorned in precious shells, Honey & turmeric dipped Fingers, a fresh fade Heart ricocheting off a wine-stained mattress

Swear they be draped in lustrous tapestry, auric, RuinYourselfweaved in Bright kanekalon on the fleshy fabric,

Tarnished copper rings of snakes & roses between gapped teeth, Plum mouth Rising, Nipples whetted on moonstone,

How charming it is to be a body, Frail & frivolous in its frigid

A mooring riddled with gutter-rumble, They out here in a thin skin,

Alive? a heavy mess, Crown of acrylics, Child of the Compost, Them dragged down by constellations

The Huntress on their left ear, Cassiopeia dangling on the right. Dead hurts be heavy & they swollen With a thousand million inhales.

Swear they emerged on all fours, Back already aching, Unbuttoned their tits & wounded the moon, Got the whole ground shook.

IN CASE OF A BLK PLANET

turn right at every MLK JR BLVD meet us on the 100 block on the corner of CORNER STORE and BEAUTY SUPPLY here, hot Cheeto dust o one layer ( thick) turn water into a Lil Hug with just one two-step your neighbor Lil nigga and your pronouns nigga/nigga/nigga's and your momma Ms. Nigga and your lil friends: My Niggas no names called out the side of someone's mouf no nigga uttered unless soaked in absolute respect ( thick) no name, if not absolutely correct your outer space televisions Blkity Blk queered here, unsurveilled reverse gentrification of the moon here, Blk planet moon talk sweet to the tides every new arrival gives thanks (read:) pours one out, asks for permission- one shea buttered finger greases the route of a moon crater, a promise to good stewardship, collective transformation, a pledge divested from the nation-state

thisisnottheendoftheworld/justtheendofyours

&Blk planet waves push pull on beats 2 and 4

Blk planet perpetual eclipse earth not even good enough to see us no more / entire galaxy the Black kid's table

noteventheyskyisforthem

we nebulous in our negritude two step thru our orbit we electric beams rub our skin together like lightning we grind thru the galaxy playing slow jams during retrogrades

we drained genesis Blk hole sun

CY OZGOOD *

Cy Ozgood is a queer poet and witch based in Wisconsin. They have a degree in text and media arts from The Evergreen State College and are the author of several chapbooks including, most recently, Girl Tramp (Horse Less Press, 2016) and Day (MOLD Editions, 2018). Their work has been featured in baest, Gritty Silk, The Operating System and Horse Less Review. They are a tarot reader, astrologer, farmer, educator, and a seasoned performer who has shared their poetry, music and performance art in basements, living rooms, storefronts, puppet theaters, coffeeshops, churches, wineries, county fairs, riverside docks and clearings in the woods since 2011.

FAR BLOODY

The color the sky was I said it was my favorite since childhood, I asked my mother “what color is that?” she said, “I don't know. What would you call it?” Felt too small to answer, now I say some things are beautiful enough not to need names.

Anyway I'm not really a poet anymore, I still don't know what to call it, only ever called things that didn't really exist windows to climb out of in the middle of the night I don't see the point we share a body that is currently purging a parasitic infection that has been escalating for centuries the symptoms include formation of violent authoritarian power structures, manufactured scarcity as control tactic, every human impulse (art, sex, care of children, god) being molded in the image of exploitation, war, frequent ecological disaster mirroring outbursts of human violence fueled by the hatred and paranoia that surge beneath the skin like fever, among all this I quit my job and ran away to film myself eating cake in the dining room just like she did, my mother turned eight on the boat farbloody I never even learned a word for that.

To stay is to be known, to identify to offer oneself for holding. I jelly in my discrepancy. I come back new with a new name. Hold me. Cynthia took the children to Spain for many reasons: she wanted to get out of the business, Ripley was being intractable, New York was falling apart/opening up/falling apart, and she wanted to write a book about a woman she'd heard on a record: Pastora Pavó n, or The Girl with the Combs, had always loved her song called deep.

Pastora was in hiding, presumed dead in Paris, begging on the streets, a drunk they said but Cynthia found her in Seville, a good singer but her brother Tomás was better, a respectable lady with an ice box who wanted to be remembered that way and not for the way her throat had trembled so publicly, had chosen a quiet life for herself every night sitting in front of her husband 's bar with a cup of coffee, had chosen to be someone.

I went to Rochester, MN couldn't even say my great-great-great-great grandfather settled this land STOLE IT they had a box about us at the historical society I showed up unannounced my car full of everything I could fit I didn't live anywhere I needed to know

I spent two nights at the house where my grandmother was born got drunk and cried I lost to the ghosts the owner was turning it into a short-term rental I told my friend they said who goes to Rochester what's even there I said the Mayo Clinic they said oh, sick people

CLAUDE COELHO SILVEIRA *

Claude is a 29 year old trans masculine collage and sculpture artist. Born in Missouri, he has lived and traveled all over the Midwest. He currently lives in Adrian MI where he abuses a local university’s computer lab to print all of his 2D work.

CLAUDE COELHO SILVEIRA

CLAUDE COELHO SILVEIRA

ZACHARY SMITH *

Zachary Smith is a nonbinary multimedia artist currently living in Albuquerque, NM, originally from East Texas. They are currently studying Fine Arts at Central New Mexico Community College, and looking to pursue a career in the arts.

LEARNING TO LOVE YOURSELF

RAY SOLLER *

Ray Soller is a disabled nonbinary artist and poet from Denton, Texas. His poem, “Vulnerability”, is from a series of clothing-inspired poems titled, “Not Pretty”.

Ray wrote these poems at the beginning of their social transition as a newly discovered trans masc non-binary human and the poems speak to their experience navigating style, gender, asexuality, dysphoria, expectations, and self-rediscovery.

VULNERABILITY

My friend made me a tie, told me I could be queen, or king, -or whatever. Liked the pics on instagram I was terrified of posting, Gave me men’s fashion advice without batting an eye Told me how to find clothes that fit, Sent me skate videos (for inspiration)

M TRAN *

M Tran is a(n) Queer Afro-Viet Bigender Trans Fem Artist-Activist originally from Birmingham, AL. Her work leans closely to her intersections as an individual and passions as a movement worker and facilitator. She has been a performing poet for nearly five years and hopes to continue to aid her communities through her work as an artist.

It was a real hot summer

Somewhere a boi made of bread

Bears a broad jaw

And a ray of sunshine around their neck

A glistening

Of brilliant warmth Leaps

From between lips

As hands out stretch

The first time A woman

Like me Had known the company of god

Everything was heavy

The Weight of the sun beaming down on flesh Resonating in jest

“it's lovely to meet you “

My grin, a flash Flicker

Reflection of their hue

It was the least I could do/some humble offering

Tropical body

Thick as the air of any home we could name ours

You seem so afraid to bask in your own

Fear for the shadow seeping from beneath that hallowed light

We are all born of blackness

To fear the dark is to curse your mother

I want to know the duality of you

The fullness of your majesty

Oh dear prince of honeyed sky

Soft shade of blood orange

Sweet grace of wet earth

Take me up in the greatness of your body

Allow me to offer you permission

To be

Here I begin to feel the shift

In degrees

One by one

The rising increments

Of chests in steady resonance

Until our ringing radiates deep into bone

Like an ache Like a thirst

All of a sudden Aspirated

Gasping And dissolving

Into one another

A bead of sweat Falling

Like condensation

In this moment we have no idea

What rests beyond the edge

Fingers gripped tight to shoulder and hip

Like fitted sheet corners

For whatever is rising

We will greet its dawn Together

Like the newness of day.

BRADLEY TRUMPFHELLER *

Bradley Trumpfheller is the author of the chapbook Reconstructions (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). Their work has appeared in Poetry, The Nation, Indiana Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. A MacDowell fellow, they split their time between Virginia & Massachusetts.

DREAM ENDING IN A ROAD TRIP HOME FROM A FUNERAL

But there are so many ways to begin. Whole pastoral wound up indoors while we fell into mourning. Unless even the moon shotgunned light off the clouds’ midriffs. Drool on every doorjamb. Yeah, the riverboat did evict

the catfish like freckles, how her arms seemed all forever w/ flight. This could be so artless, you know? Someone 's

Mississippi of mothers wished up from a creek like coins. & her voice some swamp-magic, anti-trailer park sun spat

kinda holy. Fuck the field back milkweed like whatever comes after music. & probably our ghosts do stay

the wind melodic, parking lot renatured & kudzu cut down from the cross. I'm already forgetting where

we began. This place was called yes. This song was called back in from the yard. I'm dragging my last good ring finger

over every stop sign from here to Jackson. I'm rust & sugar. I'm braid & drumline. & here. I'm already gone.

MIA S. WILLIS *

Mia S. Willis is a Black performance poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their work has been featured in homology lit, FreezeRay, Narrative Northeast, Peculiar, Slamfind, and others. In 2019, Mia was named the first two-time Capturing Fire Slam Champion, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, the Young Artist Fellow at Chashama’s ChaNorth residency, a collaborator in Forward Together’s Transgender Day of Resilience Art Project, and a performing artist on RADAR Productions’ Sister Spit 2020 Tour. Their debut poetry collection, monster house., was the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Foundation’s Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and is available with Jai-Alai Books.

BOI FINGERS

afterdennisr.rushofthepineplainswritinggroup.

i'll come right out and tell you what this poem is about. i know that's what you're looking for. this poem is about the time my father called me "JAMES" for an entire summer when i was 8 simply because i asked him to. how my father was the first to reach for these boi fingers and say "I WILL STILL CALL YOU, NO MATTER THE NAME.” the way he taught these clumsy digits the difference between soil and dirt.

open. entice with iridescence. promise faithfully blooming wealth. draw blood from the overzealous. set a price for prying. prove only the weak need hunt toothless beings with sharp knives. close.

SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE BOI AS AN OYSTER anonet.

YARROW YES WOODS *

yarrow yes woods is a maid and copywriter from Missouri. She also fronts Harrowing. Recent work is available in E·ratio, Aurochs, Thin Noon, DREGINALD, A) GLIMPSE) OF), The Wanderer, and DIAGRAM. The excerpted poem “from Death and” was originally published in Dream Pop Journal #6, Fall 2018.

excerpt from DEATH AND

i was never one body & though it might make things look easier i don;t know-how reduced to Getit,girl! it might make what with? the bacteria my gut the air in my chest (i know) i could not be in one place at one time: the water i once called Mine the 75% -78% of My Body That Was & the straw Thatbrokebitch calamity Whose took it out of me? distance comingcloser i laughed & shouted & cheered one or two tears Haveyoufailedtomakeyourself to spread myself i did not sob thankfully i’ve never tested my mascara in public name pockets by how many fingers they hold IsNothingSacred? sounds they make play Dig -ing is to be active more over plot me on a graph i am here! and here x & y not u & i is TimeElapsed & is Hope(mL) here Let’sPlay if we glide o (l a b i (&) a) s k e w even here LeftforDead this & ER OS I O N at DELPHI Is & marathon failure L Y C H WhAT & too late too late come back i & u n Der Die Das How many times can MEAN & /or Mask. Fem. Neu. (meaning new) &c &c &c

HOPE YOUNGBLOOD *

Hope is a trans femme student at Murray State University, studying arts and humanities as a bachelor of independant studies. While there are very few resources here for trans and gender nonconforming folk, Hope is blessed with good parents and a few very supportive friends and teachers. She loves reading Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and William Blake, and dreams of a life beyond Kentucky.

CARPET TOWN