Sundress Reads: Review of Different With Him

Diving into the rawness of modern trans adolescence, mk zariel’s chapbook Different With Him (Rockwood Press, 2026) follows a transmasculine anarchist youth embracing their identity while wrestling with social narratives and heartbreak. A desire to become and find acceptance through late-night chats and texts are layered within zariel’s informal, magnetic prose.

zariel sets the contemporary tone with their opening poem “buzzfeed quizzes for the desperate.” Readers are given the image of a person so socially isolated and fearful of their surroundings that their recourse is engaging with opinions of random strangers on the internet. We’re given clues that the sardonic speaker of this poem is aware that the one accessing the quizzes is running away from facing their darkness and pain, hoping to find an “easy” technological fix like many youths of our time. Vapid opinions mock the person by dancing around their actual wants. zariel writes:

“pick three people to cast off &
we’ll tell you what the hell your problem is—
—make a mixtape of muffled screams
to find out the ache of your aura…
—spend a weekend in your ideal life & we’ll tell you
how your real one grew wings & traipsed away
in the rain with your lost friends“ (9).

The poems that follow layer this with a determined main speaker, someone who would have accessed those types of quizzes during their hesitations to be themselves. “voices” is a literal title: the speaker takes in willful ignorance from relatives, spectators, and their therapist. Their internalized transphobia is characterized as a contradictory angel in their mind, with their truest, suppressed desires acting as the shy, dissenting devil. The speaker eventually empowers themselves by taking concrete action: throwing away their dresses. They accept that words can be weapons, yet they “melt them down and make them shining armor for [their] new bodymind” (11). A powerful reclamation that illuminates through a massive fog of words on the page; it’s wonderful how precise the imagery of a transmasculine identity becomes in my mind.

Yet the irony of the speaker’s alleged confidence is that they spend a great deal of the chapbook mourning their sense of belonging and ultimate loss of a relationship with a cisgender boy. Their bond begins as an intellectual friendship and loyalty to the other, finding common ground through their anarchist beliefs and discussions about dead theorists. Like many adolescents struggling to find acceptance, the speaker is a lonely one. They idolize the boy, and project onto the boy who they wish he was rather than seeing him as he is. zariel writes:

“…i chose you because it was
the summer of ‘23 at the time, & nothing seemed weird compared
to the ANews comments, which means you’re
normal & i’m loved
i look awkward in the mosh pit, that night you
just stay in & read” (14).

Because the boy didn’t openly mock the speaker and their beliefs, and asked constantly if he had offended them or not with his remarks, the speaker believes that the boy is being considerate of their transmasculinity and that they are the same. They try to convince themself of their truth by recommending an anarchist zine to the boy. When that same zine leads to an abrupt end to their relationship, with the boy ghosting them and staging events without them, the speaker spirals into confusion and despair over the two years they had together.

Healing from the sudden loss is messy. In “retrospective,” they grieve by dressing in clothes they believe the boy will like, hoping that the boy will someday come back. They “catalog every memory they have of him, one of which actually happened, but all the others sound much more real” (17). In their loneliness, the speaker, “the lost (girl)boy” teaches AI to text like the missing boy, “break[ing] open” (18) when the impersonator begins to sound too much like him. It’s an unfortunately familiar tale of heartache when someone doesn’t live up to our expectations. I teared up while reading this honest piece of loss.

Anger trails in the wake, as often comes with mourning, and with it comes clarity no longer clouded by luminescence. The speaker begins to see the warts of the boy who left them hanging as he continues to carry on the wisps of familiarity. He wishes to know where they are, even though the speaker gave the luddite their location. What once seemed generous acts from the boy now feels fake and misplaced, the speaker justifiably exasperated by the audacity.
zariel writes:

“& i was your beloved once,
but now i am your IT department
or your mortal enemy
i haven’t decided” (20).

What I found compelling about the ending poem is that the speaker continues to mourn the boy, venting to their therapist about their hurt over his 1AM text to them. However, they are clearer on who they want to become: a person who desires love “without being wrapped in the silver film of personhood—… craves tender declamations over shouts” (22). It removes pretentiousness, validates the pain felt in loss, and brings back into focus their queer acceptance, one that the speaker now knows remains outside of the boy’s nervousness around them. It’s that self acceptance that brings joy to my heart.

Different With Him is a brief and mighty twenty-four pages. I hope zariel’s poems are savored and give trans youth hope to never settle for less.

Different With Him is available through Rockwood Press

Heather Takenaga is a poet and writer born and raised in Riverside, CA. She is currently writing short stories and poetry. When she is not volunteering, she is drooling for cat cuddles, moonlit walks, and a reading vacation.




The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Beautiful Outlaw by Jennifer Perrine

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor dez brown, is from Beautiful Outlaw by Jennifer Perrine (Kelsey Street Press 2025).

ASHES

I keep my mother on the shelf. The urn fits my fingers, though I never pull it down. When I
received it, how weightless it felt, no different in size or heft from my bottle of pills, thirty
white discs settled to its bottom, so much volume unoccupied. In her vessel, does she reside
only in the tiniest line of dust, the rest just emptiness stretched over her? I refuse to let my
curiosity be piqued. I’ve never peered inside, not once through the sixteen months it’s posed

on that ledge, brazen, coaxing me to lift the lid, to find her reduced to grit. I’ve got only
a token bit of her in that jar. The balance remained with her boyfriend, who tipped it over
the bow of a borrowed boat. I don’t know where my mother would have wanted to go to while
away her afterlife, if floating then fading into the ocean would have been her choice. What
could I know? We avoided each other for a decade, then two, then three. We never quarreled,

or spat cruel names, or sat at a table in civil silence. We simply existed on our distant, separate
coasts. Now we’re so close. Fragments I could cradle, could carry around all day, instead stay
encased in black lacquer, cloaked in a baroque display of swirling gold vines. If I were bolder,
I’d keep some powder exposed in clear glass, as I would keep azaleas in a vase, a final trace of
perfume in a vial, jasmine tea forgotten in its pot, left to molder. I would inspect its contents

for chips, for shards, for a hint of what’s had its hooks in my throat. But I don’t want to hold
this handful of char, don’t want to follow my shrink’s instructions to conduct a ritual, to mix it
with dirt to nourish a sapling, or sow it across my yard for foraging juncos to find. I don’t
want to touch it to my lips, to sniff for a whiff of what’s past. I want a vigil: watchful nights
of brushing hair back to cloak a zigzag of scars, of tracking a somniloquy of dark moans to its

origin in her cluttered heart. I want to hunt down that juncture where we grew apart, her life
branching from mine. I’d pull free the axe that cleaved the tough bark of our bond, grind
that blade keen enough to hack at my ache, pulverize it to a fine particulate. I want to quit,
even for a minute, imagining we embraced at the end, unhurried, my face buried in her only
body. I want to forget how every day took her farther from me. How, even now, they take.

Jennifer (JP) Perrine’s (any/all) most recent book, Beautiful Outlaw, was the recipient of the QTBIPOC Book Prize and the Stafford/Hall Prize for Poetry. Perrine is the author of four previous books of poetry: Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their other recent work appears in the anthologies Best Small Fictions, Uncertain Girls in Uncertain Times, and A Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid Lit Collection. A two-time winner of Arts and Culture Diversity and Inclusion Awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, JP lives in Portland, where they cohost the Incite: Queer Writers Read series, guide nature and forest therapy retreats, and manage an equity and environmental justice program for the state of Oregon.

dr. dez brown (they/he), publishing as dezireé a. brown, is a Black queer nonbinary and transmasculine Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and interdisciplinary scholar, born and raised in Flint, MI. Their debut collection of poetry, they/she/he: ritual to forget your (un)becoming, was the winner of the Joe W. Bratcher Prize and a finalist for the 2026 Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Often claiming to have been born with a poem written across his chest, he spends much of his time gaming and plays a mean hand of spades. Follow them online at @deziree.the.writer.


Project Bookshelf: Alexandra Bautista

Since I was a baby, I’ve had the same bookshelf. It’s a bit of a mess. 

I’ve had to stack some books on top of the vertical ones because I can’t fit them in properly, and it takes me a good five minutes to find a book that is not in the first rows of my shelves. Finding a book often entails taking out the entire first row to see what’s in the back, only to put the books back because what I’m looking for isn’t there after all. My books spill out of the shelf itself, climbing like ivy to sit on top of the shelf. More can be found in a metal cart and in the bottom two shelves of a shelf in the living room because, as many books as my shelf can hold, I simply own too many.

So let’s take a tour of my bookshelf, for if the eyes are the windows to the soul, then my bookshelf is the window to my heart. 

The best place to start is actually not the shelf itself, I think. It’s hard to show the full thing, but I have a Google Spreadsheet titled “Alex’s Library” that holds an alphabetized list of all the books I own (333, to be exact). Above is a bit of that spreadsheet, but I do admit that I chose a section that had more “Completed” books than “Not Started,” just for the sake of portraying myself mildly positively on the internet.

The sections that I track are the status of the book (completed, in-progress, not started, DNF), the title and author of the book, as well as whether it belongs to a certain series, two genres that I feel best encompass the book, the book format (paperback, hardcover, Book of the Month, collector’s edition, movie tie-in, and manga), and the amount of pages in the book. Additionally, I also note the dates that I started and ended reading a book, my rating out of 5 stars, a link to a review that I’ve posted online, and a section for notes about the book. 

This spreadsheet is how I maintain a sense of control over the chaos of my books, and it makes it really easy to share with my friends when we want to buddy read a book. I take a lot of pride in my spreadsheet organization, honestly, so let me know if you’re also a spreadsheet fiend.

The books that are in the front are usually books that I have yet to read so that I can see them clearly and decide more quickly when I want to start a new book. A lot of these books are ones that have been published a bit more recently and thus were recently acquired. You might notice that some of those books have Goodwill stickers on the spine! A lot of my books (except for the Book of the Month editions) are found in Little Free Libraries, thrift stores, or used bookstores. A few books are bought from local bookstores around me and have been gathered throughout the years (I’m chronically late, and that includes reading popular books). 

It’s so hard to try to speak about my bookshelf since if I showed you every individual shelf (all two rows) and the books in other places, you’d be here reading for a very long time. So lastly, I’ll just show you my favorites collection.

This top shelf holds a bit of a collection of Casey McQuiston’s books. Red, White & Royal Blue is one of my favorite books ever. It holds a character that I see a lot of myself in and makes me believe that I, too, can one day live openly and happily. All of McQuiston’s books are the epitome of queer joy. Of course, that’s not to say that their characters don’t face challenges, but seeing these characters that are well-characterized enough to feel like real people receive happy endings in their stories makes me feel like real life can have happy moments as well. Some of my books are tabbed and annotated, and those I’ve turned around to show off to the world.

I also have Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou, a book that was assigned for me to read in my first year at UCLA. It’s a biting satire of academia, particularly concerning the studies of Eastern cultures in Western settings. It grapples with the power dynamics of various interracial relationships between the main character and her partner, the Chinese poet who turns out to actually be white, as well as the lasting effects of Western colonization on modern cultures of the colonized.

Lastly, for my favorite books, I have three copies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The 1818 text was also required for me to read for a different UCLA English course, and I immediately fell in love with the story. I don’t often cry when reading books, but I sure did while reading this one. The essay I wrote for this book is one of my favorites from my degree, and I was so lucky to meet one of my best friends, Emma, in that class. The colorful spine of Frankenstein was a gift from her when she was visiting Denmark, and I cherish it as a symbol of where our friendship started.

Speaking of my English degree, I would be remiss not to mention the stack of bricks called Norton anthologies that I have. Despite the late nights those books gave me, I can’t bring myself to try to get rid of them. They’re filled with notes from when I first started out as an English major and remind me of where I started. Even when I moved, I took them with me. They’re not particularly my favorite, but I wouldn’t be where I am without them.

Photo of a Southeast Asian woman wearing glasses looking past the camera, smiling. In her hands are two books. She is wearing a white dress with a blue ribbon, a pearl necklace, and a blue and gold graduation sash. In the background are blurry bookshelves.

Alexandra Bautista (she/her) is an intern at Sundress Publications who hails from sunny California. Armed with an expensive piece of cardstock (her UCLA English degree) and way too much anxiety for one human body to hold, she approaches her lifelong love of reading with a perspective that is both analytical and emotional. Due to her background in tutoring high-school-aged and college-level students in writing, she believes that inside of everyone is a writer waiting to share their inner voice. Hopefully someday that will include her… whenever she gets over her writer’s block, that is. Which, likely, very possibly, maybe, might be never. 

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents November Poetry Xfit

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Shelby Hansen. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, November 29th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at tiny.utk.edu/poetryxfit.

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!

The theme for November’s Poetry Xfit is Experiment. For this month’s Xfit, Think about unexpected ways to work with white space, diction, shape, and language. Consider abandoning your comfort zones and experimenting with different ideas and forms—or lack thereof!

Shelby Hansen is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self through a speculative lens. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.

This event is brought to you in part by a grant provided by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here.

We are excited to announce the launch of a new fundraising campaign centered on a simple idea: writers helping writers. Donors who make a gift of $100 or more to Sundress Publications can receive a poetry manuscript consultation as a thank-you for supporting our work. Learn more here on our website.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents The Poet Journalist: Intro to Docupoetics

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Poet Journalist: Intro to Docupoetics” a workshop led by Mandy Shunnarah on Wednesday, November 11th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Register today!

Poets are keen observers of the world and are always trying to make sense of what it means to be alive here, now, in this moment. Docupoetics, or documentary poetry, is one way to do that. By letting the latest headlines inspire poems and using journalistic skills––such as interviews, embedded citations, and historical, academic, and archival research––poets bring an urgent voice and a critical eye to the issues of the day. In this workshop, you’ll learn about the history of docupoetics, what poets are drawn to the subgenre and why, and you’ll be guided through a generative writing exercise to pen your own documentary poem.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, Mandy has requested that those who are able and appreciative make donations to Sundress! Or folks who to donate to Gaza, could give to The Sameer Project.

Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Appalachian-Palestinian writer in Columbus, Ohio. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Black Warrior Review, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland, was released in 2024, and their second book, We Had Mansions: Poems, was published by Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.

We are excited to announce the launch of a new fundraising campaign centered on a simple idea: writers helping writers. Donors who make a gift of $100 or more to Sundress Publications can receive a poetry manuscript consultation as a thank-you for supporting our work. Learn more on our website.

Thank you to the Tennessee Arts Commission for their grant that supports this workshop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian (Perugia Press 2026).

MY FATHER WITH A SOLDIER IN FRONT
OF HIS HOUSE IN JERUSALEM, 1947

MyFatherWithASoldierInFrontOfHisHouseInJerusalem1947Download

Jen Siraganian (she/her) is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets 2016 and 2025, The Cincinnati Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is a winner of the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and The Writing Salon’s Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. She served as managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, and she is a Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian (Perugia Press 2026).

READING A BOOK OF ARMENIAN BABY NAMES
THE NIGHT BEFORE MY WATER BREAKS

Editor's Note: Given the formatting of this poem, they are best viewed as below in an uploaded PDF format.
ReadingABookOfArmenianBabyNamesTheNightBeforeMyWaterBreaksDownload

Jen Siraganian (she/her) is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets 2016 and 2025, The Cincinnati Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is a winner of the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and The Writing Salon’s Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. She served as managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, and she is a Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian (Perugia Press 2026).

WALKING INTO ST. JAMES CATHEDRAL
AS IF WE WERE ALREADY GHOSTS

Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem

inside  mosaics chant // lanterns half-tip  from
silver  chains  // incense  lifts  tin // a crowned
Jesus  blackened  from  smoke //  gold reflects
gold  // a  bearded  priest tells  my  father // to
uncross  his  legs  // we  leave  before the  final
prayer  // snake  along  walls of  peeled gray //
a  square  of  olive  trees  // the  cemetery  door
rusted  and  locked  // a  half-asleep  priest sits
nearby, his  legs  spread  to a  V //  he  says  the
cemetery  guard  is  away  //  my  father  points
to me  and  pleads // a  tarnished  key unveiled
// a  white  dog  follows  us //  his nose  tasting
sky // we can’t find my grandparents’ graves //
too  many  gravestones layered  with  shattered
platters // rows of black crosses // vines heavy
with  rotten grapes  and  chips  of  porcelain //
weeds  splinter  stone  //  everything  has been
moved // even  the  dead

Jen Siraganian (she/her) is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets 2016 and 2025, The Cincinnati Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is a winner of the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and The Writing Salon’s Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. She served as managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, and she is a Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian

This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead by Jen Siraganian (Perugia Press 2026).

THE LOUDEST SOUND IS THE ABSENCE OF A WORD

Editor's Note: Given the formatting of this poem, they are best viewed as below in an uploaded PDF format.
TheLoudestSoundIsTheAbsenceOfAWordDownload

Jen Siraganian (she/her) is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets 2016 and 2025, The Cincinnati Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, the anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, and elsewhere, and she is a winner of the New Ohio Review Poetry Prize and The Writing Salon’s Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. She served as managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, and she is a Lucas Artist Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, California.

Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.


Sundress Reads: Review of Destroy Me, Desecrate My Bones

A line-art sheep wearing spectacles reads a book while drinking a mug holding a hot beverage next to the Sundress Reads Logo

Victoria Hood’s Destroy Me, Desecrate My Bones (Girl Noise Press, 2026) is a hybrid collection that shows how a build-up of unsettled yearning can break a person down. In a mix of grotesque, obsessive, and confessional voices, Hood’s writing pulls you deeper into the spiraling decay of being in love. Split into six sections, Destroy Me, Desecrate My Bones begins with trying to cling to love before the subsequent sections turn to consuming, reshaping, and surrendering to the damage. I focus on the first two sections, “To Contain” and “To Devour,” to track the transition from clinging to consuming.

What strikes me about the prose piece “I’m Sorry We’re Getting Married” in “To Contain” is that it is entirely about her, even if it obsessively focuses on their connection. We never hear Harry’s voice, yet by the end she seems to feel her questions have been answered, and she closes with “see you at the wedding in July.” I keep wondering how much time sits between her writing this and seeing him, and whether he ever hears any of it. The piece fixates on “I love you, Harry,” and nearly every time she says it, an insecurity or another thought about why it wouldn’t work follows. Reading it, I found myself asking: if you have to repeat it this many times, do you truly love him, or are you trying to prove to other people the marriage is right for the two of you? Each declaration reads to me like a battle over which matters more: the lover she holds close, or the people watching. Even so, the close, “I think I’ve answered my question,” feels like she’s trying to force an ending rather than letting it happen naturally.

“I want to feel you drip down me” in “To Devour” mixes intimacy and eroticism in the most grotesque way you can imagine. But then it turns from “I want” to “I don’t want,” and the tone shifts from erotic to haunting: the speaker wants to “clean off the world” from their partner “before you enter the house,” insists, “I don’t want you to die,” then wipes them down and licks them clean “before the sacrifice can begin.” It tips from kinky to ritualistic quickly, and the “sweet and sticky” substance in the beginning is called honey but reads as bodily, especially with “before your insides can come out.” Both readings, a kinky couple and a cannibalistic one, end up being about the same thing: being known by someone so completely that you consume them and hear thoughts you can’t normally. The impossibility of getting inside someone’s head is turned literal through the possessive care of stripping off shoes, clothes, and germs to keep their lover safe, but also isolating them from the rest of the world.

The prose in “How are you?” in “To Devour” is where the collection shifts; there is a stark volley between “The Girl” and “The Best Friend.” They think about the other often and reminisce about each other, yet neither says anything. It is the most poignant compared to the previous poems in the collection because it’s so relatable to friends drifting apart when both are going through difficult things at the same time. The line that resonates with this the most is when you hear The Girl’s interiority: “It is hard to do well when you are nervous that your wellness is not as important as someone else’s.” When one friend is doing better, and the other one is struggling, there are social scripts with clear roles to fall into. But when both care deeply despite their separate struggles, they can’t tell who fits which role, and the confusion can create more distance, as it does here. Even at this distance, the grotesque hasn’t left. “Neither of them wants to climb inside each other, they are both scared to bring up the insides” mirrors earlier poems that try to consume the person the speaker cares about. Here, the same imagery becomes emotional intimacy they can’t risk, so the merging of their bodies appears as a fear of being that close.

Reading Hood’s collection, I came away feeling that the search for love and connection never actually ends. It keeps pushing deeper until it can’t be contained, and the book’s sections follow that path from “To Contain” to “To Spill Over.” Her narratives are messy and grotesque, and refuse to be cleaned up neatly. Intimacy arises, fails, and sometimes succeeds, and the book treats all of it as love that needs to be honored because it is difficult and uncomfortable to face. Often the love isn’t even heard by the other person, and the poems suggest that being heard may not be the most important part of feeling connected. Even though Hood writes love as something that cannot be held in, I felt held by her work. It captures the weird, sad girls who cry over everything and never had a place to put those feelings. Now we can set them down in her collection.

Order your copy from Girl Noise Press today!

Emma Flores is an undergraduate student at Binghamton University studying English. They have a particular interest in researching human behavior and society through storytelling, with a focus on cultural narratives and folklore. In their free time, Emma can be found doing tarot readings, wandering bookstores, or hunting down spiritual shops for the next deck to add to their growing collection.