When I was a kid, my mom taught me the importance of books. As a published author and a single mother working full time at a small-town newspaper, she knew the value of the written word. And I grew to love them. She got me a bookshelf, painted the outside purple and the inside green. By the time I was six, it was filled to the brim with books. Chapter books, picture books, pop up books. Something of nearly every genre and age range. The shelves sagged under the weight of thousands of words. That same shelf now sits in my kid sister’s room, filled with different books, but the same weight.
When I was in my teens, I outgrew that tiny bookshelf. My books were longer, heavier. They would no longer fit. So, for Yule one year, my parents bought me a large black-and-silver bookshelf. One with enough space to fit all of my books and my trinkets. I reorganized that shelf a hundred times while I had it. Sometimes alphabetically by author last name, sometimes rainbow order. But it was always full. Fantasy, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and every story I could get my hands on. I think that’s what made me love writing so much. Reading stories by so many people about so many things. Every time a book made me cry, I found myself desperate to recreate that feeling in my own writing.
At twenty-one, I moved out of Oklahoma and up to Virginia. I packed all of my belongings into my tiny 2007 two-door Honda civic and drove across the country in two days. However, in order to do that, I had to get rid of as much of my stuff as I could. I sold or donated almost every book that I owned. The only ones I kept were either a part of my religious practice, or books I was in the middle of. Once I got to Virginia, I got sucked under the wave of my life. I was a full time college student working as much as I could to get some money.
I finally started reading again when I decided to switch my major to poetry. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. They say there’s no money in poetry. I don’t believe that. But, even if I did, I wouldn’t care. Even if poetry couldn’t keep my stomach fed, it nourishes my soul. Now, my bookshelf has a total of twelve books. Norse and Greek mythology for my religious practice, several fantasy books, and a handful of poetry books that I’ve annotated a little too much.
I’ll work on growing my collection again when I have an actual bookshelf to grow it on. But, for now, I like my small anthology of myth, magic, and poetry.
Greyson Finch (he/him) is a poet from Oklahoma. Throughout his life, he’s struggled with his mental health and childhood trauma while also growing up queer in the South. He uses that to write pieces that speak to the soul. Pieces that people like him can read to know they’re not alone. He’s been published in The Bloomin’ Onion and Wingless Dreamer. He can be found on twitter at @Greyson_Finch77 and Instagram at @greysonfinchwrites
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
Because Memory, I Am Told, Is Unreliable—
Lie, just a little, about the color of the grass, the quality of sky, the air and whether it is breathable. For instance
that house across the street is not broken down yet, its sockets retaining the same panes of glass it was born with
just like the eyes we keep forever if we can—aging, but the same. Tell me it isn’t February and colder
than usual. Don’t explain to my soul beauty; I don’t want to know. I want to believe that this small town
is a place I’d stay forever. That the men smoking outside of the halfway house don’t scare me much—
or intrigue me some because I am also halfway. That after years of being named the offender by my abuser
[the man from whom I’m still running], I’m not confused concerning the snow falling today and whether
it is desirable for its whiteness and coolness on my face, or if I am tired of its falling. I only know how long
I’ve been tumbling into grief and too many questions— a disassociation from every present moment into an obscure past.
The house across the street invites workers for remodeling; the coffee shop in town makes breakfast sandwiches I like.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Photo Credit: Sarah Deragon
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
How to Forgive the Predator
All living things must eat. The stomach is not impartial; neither
the soul. We survive by what we do and do not nurture,
and sometimes this requires teeth. I say to my son, Don’t incise the soft part of your heart. But he does,
creating a scar—each time toughening, each time making the tissue
less susceptible to pain. When I got divorced I learned quickly
that this is what made me desirable for eating, having been broke down
by a mallet, my husband’s hammering anger tenderizing me.
Having forgotten pain. Having learned not to squeal
in a cage but continue to release the lactic acid that keeps the slaughter
from spoiling. My son teaches himself to forget pain too
in the same house, on the same street, with the same sort of fleshly
cravings, a little indifference to break down his appetite for love.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Photo Credit: Sarah Deragon
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
Taxonomy
There is a way to say a name in the present that changes the way you say that name in its future, like the way my own name and my mother’s name became both blessing and curse in the mouths of the men that spoke them. When I first left my home two years after divorcing my husband, two years before my son’s graduation, and three years before my daughter wrote the poems that would break me, I said my daughter’s name to the breeze, then my son’s name while standing by a river in New Hampshire feeling finally free, not feeling the names like blessing or curse, or anything so weighty. Only their inscription in the earth of the journey that carried me, as if I was sure they could hear me, as if to declare: Mother is alive. Follow. As if I didn’t know I was leaving. As if I really thought they’d come running behind, waving their arms with joy.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Photo Credit: Sarah Deragon
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
I Wanted to be a Boy
because I want to be a wolf; because the earth smells of sinew and green. Because his hair was made of corn dust and cloud, and I wanted to weave it around me, trust his sky. Because Eros did not strike my thigh or breast; instead he plunged knives into my chest and kept the heart beating. Because lunge is so similar to lung, both attempting a breath. Because I was breathing when my mother bore me, and this was written down on a chart next to the names of other living things— and some of them were masculine; because this was not a female breath. Because it took years to tame my teeth, and still I try to use them; because they are pretty. Because I feel like thunder often, dance like snow; because I am living. Because his arms were made of roots, and I wanted to trust cultivation. Because the sky tastes of lilac and honey; because I am breathing because its wound has made more room inside my chest. Because I lunged when hungry and almost used my teeth; because a body seems heavier after it’s dead, even though it isn’t. You can heft its corpse anywhere without cooperation if you have the stamina. If you’re big and strong enough.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Photo Credit: Sarah Deragon
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ezra Fox, is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Arkansas Press 2025).
Content Warning: animal abuse
A Pedagogy for Lesser Bodies
My husband kicked our dachshund puppy out the back door because she peed a quarter-size puddle on the living room carpet.
At less than a few months old, this mishap is to be expected. Nevertheless, he rustled her out, scooped her up with his foot
and threw her into the snow shouting profanities that are later described to our two children as easily forgivable
frustration. They forgive him, of course, and hug him as, through a window, I watch the puppy shiver and circle
until she finds a spot where she feels safe enough to pee. She needs to remain outdoors, he says to the children,
to become accustomed to the cold. She needs to adjust, he explains, a lesson she should have learned by now. He is right.
She needs to learn—and learn quickly. But she doesn’t. Instead, she becomes more nervous and pees indoors frequently.
Finally, he takes her to the vet, where she is diagnosed with bladder malfunction, and he tells the children, so easily, that this
is a pre-existing condition, explaining we cannot afford the medication to treat her. She is promptly shot in the head
and buried in the woods. Afterward, he consoles our children, grieving together over her grave.
I stay in the house and watch a boiling pot of spaghetti noodles go from stiff yellow limbs to limp white tentacles, the steam bathing
my face in faux sweat, stirring rigorously as though this transformation demands all my attention. And, in fact, it does.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Photo Credit: Sarah Deragon
Ezra Fox (they/he) is a Best of the Net nominee who lives and writes in San Francisco, CA and holds an MFA from Indiana University. A Breadloaf, Tin House, and Lambda Literary Fellow, and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship, which recognizes transgender writers of exceptional promise, their work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Pinch, Fourteen Hills, Interim, and elsewhere. Additionally, they won the 2025 West Trade Review Poetry Prize, and currently serve as assistant judge of the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Apart from writing, Ezra maintains a daily practice of reconnecting with their inner child: roller-skating, playing drums, and enjoying animated films and theme parks. In quieter moments, they can be found sharing cups of tea and sweet treats with their beloveds. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net or on Instagram @ezraxfox.
For this month’s installment of We Call Upon the Author to Explain, our editorial intern, Reina Maiden-Navarro, interviews author Jackie Domenus about their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays(ELJ Editions, 2025). The memoir blends anecdote with sociopolitical fact to take a critical lens to the microaggressions that persist from an individual adolescence to adulthood, reflective of a larger experience in the LGBTQ+ community since the turn of the century. Domenus is honest, confessional, and passionate, crafting a book that is both relatable and educational.
Reina Maiden-Navarro: Can you explain your decision to organize your memoir non-chronologically? How did you look at structure and flow in terms of craft?
Jackie Domenus: When it comes to queer and trans memoirs (and really any memoir for that matter), I believe in the structure matching the content. My understanding of myself, of my sexuality, and my gender, was/is not linear. As is the case for more “traditional” memoirs, I didn’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end with a neat resolution, so the essays in No Offense came out non-chronologically naturally. In order to determine what order I’d put them in, I took post-it notes and wrote the ages that were mentioned in each essay. From there, I arranged and re-arranged the post-its to follow a loose arc from my earliest, formative moments and microaggressive conversations, to the latest. So ultimately, the order of the essays is somewhat chronological, but the threads in each individual essay jump around in time and surround a central theme or idea.
RMN: How do you believe outside anecdotes, facts, and statistics contribute to the telling of such a personal story? What did your research process look like?
JD: For me, incorporating anecdotes, facts, and statistics into this book was a means of zooming out of my own personal experience and proving that the issues I am addressing exist in a larger context, meaning they affect others beyond just me. For instance, in the essay “Blind Spots,” I include statistics about women in the automotive business as a means of supporting my own experience of being ignored at a car dealership. Or in the essay “Thoughts and Prayers,” I include quotes from politicians reacting to the Pulse Nightclub massacre, to demonstrate that their words cause direct harm to the LGBTQ+ community at large. My research process is not very organized—it’s a lot of searching for a bunch of supporting evidence on the Internet, copying and pasting links into random documents, and deciding later which sources to actually incorporate.
RMN: The year before you published this book, you were a resident at the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). How did stepping away from your day-to-day life help you write about it?
JD: Spending time at the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) was so refreshing for my creative process. Having dedicated time away from day-to-day life gave me the opportunity to catch up on some reading, to start drafting some new material outside of the book, and perhaps most importantly, to rest. Writing-wise, I started scratching the surface of some different themes like grief and mental illness, which I hope will be an early step toward a new, full-length project. I also had no experience with farm life before Sundress, so feeding the goats and collecting eggs from the chicken coop was a first for me and an added bonus!
RMN: You’re both a writer and a former English teacher. Yet, you also speak at length about the films that shaped your understanding of your sexuality, particularly in the chapter “Queer or Crazy.” Do you think there is a unique power in visual visibility? How do you think written forms compare?
JD: I think visibility in any artistic medium is equally powerful. If I had access to books with the same sort of sapphic representation that films like the ones I write about in “Queer or Crazy” offered, I might have written about those instead. In my opinion, it’s less about comparing the forms and more about making sure representation is offered in every medium, so folks have easily accessible options, no matter their preference for books versus music versus on screen, etc.
RMN: Can you speak to the separation of past and present self when it comes to your personal perception of your gender identity? How did your evolution of identity impact the editing of the book?
JD: My perception of my gender and the evolution of my identity was perhaps what made for the trickiest part of editing the book. I had written some of the earliest essays when I was still very femme-presenting and adhering to cis norms, so the perspective of the voice in those pieces was very different from my perspective now. I struggled with deciding whether to leave those early essays as-is, to revise them from my current point of view, or to remove them from the manuscript completely. Ultimately, I ended up keeping most of them as-is, but adding a foreword at the beginning of the book to explain my decision and make that differentiation.
RMN: How do you approach writing your story with authenticity, even when it comes to divulging your own missteps?
JD: The missteps are what make us human. Personally, I would not enjoy reading a memoir where the narrator speaks as if they are perfect, or as if everyone else they’ve ever encountered is a villain in their story. I think maybe the best example of writing with authenticity and truth in No Offense is in the essay “Burden of Proof,” where I talk about my first year teaching high school and had a trans student who was mistreated by the school and his peers. My lack of understanding of transness at that point, mixed with my naivety and non-tenured status as a new teacher, ultimately led to some missteps in how I interacted with that student and failure to advocate for him properly. To write myself as some queer savior would have been inauthentic and false, and no one wants to read inauthentic, false creative nonfiction.
RMN: As an educator, what is the value of exposing students to diverse lived experiences, particularly through literature? How do you hope your own writing contributes to that purpose?
JD: When I was teaching high school English, students who got their hands on books where they could see their own experiences reflected back at them were always the most enthusiastic to read or to talk about what they read, as were students who read about a character that led them to a new realization about themselves. Again, in the same way they might have access to Netflix shows or new movies, having the opportunity to pick up a book with diverse representation or lived experiences can open up a whole new world of understanding. As far as No Offense goes, my main audience priority has always been other LGBTQ+ folks who can relate, but I also hope it can reach people who are not a part of the community and offer them a new perspective or make them think twice the next time they go to say or ask something potentially harmful.
RMN: Finally, do you have any new projects you’d like to tell us about?
JD: The project I’m super focused on and very excited about at the moment is The QT (Queer & Trans) Nonfiction Podcast! It’s a weekly show I’m hosting that explores the best of today’s memoirs, essay collections, journalism, and more by LGBTQ+ authors. Folks can listen in on discussions of nonfiction forms, craft, language, publication, and beyond. Some fiction and poetry QTs, as well as supportive allies, will even be sprinkled in throughout! Reading and sharing true stories from queer and trans perspectives feels more important now than ever. Our words are proof of our existence, which is now, in and of itself, a form of resistance. I’ve had some incredible writers and friends on so far, such as KB Brookins, Zoë Bossiere, and Edgar Gomez, to name a few. It’s available on Podbean, Spotify, and Apple.
Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer, gender nonconforming writer from South Jersey. Their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays (ELJ Editions), was named a finalist for a 2025 Publishing Triangle Award and a Notable Small Press Book of 2025 by Literary Hub. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin House Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in HuffPost, The Normal School, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere. They are the host of the new Queer & Trans Nonfiction Podcast.
Reina Maiden-Navarro is an editor, writer, and photographer. She recently graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in Film & Media Studies and a minor in Creative Writing, cum laude. She also works as an Editor at Prompt and an Outreach Coordinator at Bookstr. If she is not reading or writing, she can be found traveling, painting, or baking cookies.
Following the release of her first full-length collection, Wet Specimen, Abigail Raley spoke with Sundress Publications editorial intern Franchesca Nicole Lazaro. Here, they discussed the materiality and spectacle of the body in death, illness, and eroticism, the need for resistance against rigid gender, domestic, and ecological hierarchies, and the power of embracing our natural, “feral” selves.
Franchesca Nicole Lazaro: In “Ode to Fetal Deer,” the speaker observes: “your small body cold beneath the jar’s collapsed glass womb, your brine, mine too.” In “Flying Fox,” she writes: “Make my mouth the warehouse for your cherub’s thunder, I think, and semen trickles down my thin red jowl.” How does the body function as both a specimen and a beast in its own right?
Abigail Raley: I wrote Wet Specimen during my MFA at the University of Montana, and my professor Sean Hill took us to the zoological museum. I was taken with the way creatures are made into observable specimens. I’m also taken with the idea of spectacle, what it means to be observed or watched. The wet specimen doubles what the creature actually is—meaning it is itself, but it’s also a tool for observation. When I was at the zoological museum, I was looking at this fetal bighorn sheep, and I was thinking about how the hospital is like that too. I have cystic fibrosis, which means when I’m hospitalized, I have to be kept in a sterile environment, much like that of the specimen jar. The same doubling happens in the hospital. I am me, but I’m also a medical object under observation. That doubling also happens in eroticism, as in I am me, but I am also the erotic object you’re observing. I think that specimen/beast duality you’re tracking has to do with those divisions/replications.
FNL: In “M.A.S.H.,” the speaker tells herself: “Men’s fingers are just fingers, not bullets.” What does dissociation during intimacy or within desire reveal about the humans and animals in this collection?
AR: I’m interested in how you track dissociation throughout the work because, for me, it’s less about dissociation and more about hope. “M.A.S.H.” is a poem full of violence and grief, but the speaker of that poem is futilely hoping/trusting that those violences won’t happen. I think there’s a use in that hope, even if it is futile. I don’t think “M.A.S.H.” is a poem particularly tracking dissociation or intimacy at all. I think “M.A.S.H.” is my little utopia, where I get to be a girl forever. Of course, I don’t get to be a girl forever, and I have experienced violence, so the poem doesn’t get to live in that necessarily. I want it to, though.
FNL: In “Beast,” the speaker reflects: “Maybe it is the edge of your esophagus. In every iteration, I am touching your soft inside. There is blood in my mouth.” How does hunting function as consumption in this collection?
AR: Again, I’m so excited by your read of this section, because I haven’t had hunting on the mind, but this book is hunting quite a bit throughout. Certainly, I’m interested in consumption. Erotic experience as consumption is a pretty common trope, but I’m also interested in how it occurs naturally in non-human animals. The poems “Flying Fox” and “Anglerfish” do this most explicitly, I think, and they are some of my hungriest poems. A lot of the book is just me finding cool animal facts and writing about them. Hunting is inherently a consumptive process, so it makes sense to me that those two things would be bound together.
FNL: In “Ripe,” the speaker recalls: “a man I loved once said, I’m only waiting for you to die.” Later: “by mature, he meant your body has so much to hold, your silence.” How does physical presence in relationships aggravate domesticity for the speaker in this collection?
AR: There was a time where I was into the idea that the domestic environment was a physically entrapping space. I wrote a poem that didn’t make it into the book about the process of making a roux. I don’t know if you’ve ever made roux, but it requires a lot of standing in one place and stirring. If you stop for even a second, it could burn. The task of making it, then, is a sort of trap, if a bit low stakes. I’m curious as to how physical positions of the body govern behavior. Domesticity creates situations where bodies are coming up against each other in really animal ways. Maybe I just think that domesticity is inherently aggravated and aggravating.
FNL: In “Aubade with Cystic Fibrosis,” the speaker writes: “there was once a creature that emerged from my coffin of a throat and said, feed me” and closes with “that didn’t shake me down bright air, that didn’t consist of my body just waking up.” How does domination become intentional submission in this collection?
AR: “Aubade with Cystic Fibrosis” is about my experience with a chronically ill body. A good person to look at for this question, who has been a massive inspiration in my life, is Bob Flanagan. Flanagan had cystic fibrosis, and he did BDSM performance art and poetry. He found that submission to controlled pain was the only way to take control of the involuntary chronic pain caused by his cystic fibrosis. Submission was a necessary joy in his life. It is a gift to choose submission, because chronic illness takes that choice from you. I have no choice but to submit to illness. Maybe that poem takes on Flanagan’s choice more than I thought. To choose submission is a powerful thing.
FNL: In “But Heaven,” the speaker moves from “I was far from you and getting farther. The open air around me folded. I knew the earth would never be renewed” to closing on “I gazed, I thought of you, I smiled.” How does the collection move from feral energy to potential energy?
AR: I wonder about “feral” and “potential” as oppositional descriptors. Would feral energy be something indulgent, acted upon? And then potential energy the restrictive or repressed? Curious about your thoughts on this! I’m interested in blending death and love, but in a way that recognizes death as a banal happening. I’m obsessed with the materiality of the body, both in death and in eroticism. Maybe that’s where your feral/potential energy dichotomy is coming up.
FNL: In “Squall,” the speaker observes: “I watch the flock churn while he touches me, their nearly colliding bodies making use of all that space. His hand postures one thigh open, then the other, my stomach wide and flat as a saucer. The birds flurry, their high backs furrowing the air.” How does the speaker’s relationship with the beasts subvert the speaker’s interpersonal relationships in this collection?
AR: I love Donna Haraway’s book, Staying with the Trouble. In it, she talks about kinship in what she terms “the cthuluscene.” In the introduction to Staying with the Trouble, Haraway says, “The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present.” Disability theory also contends with this interconnectedness, but Haraway focuses on interspecies kinship, which I find to be profoundly resonant, important, and true. If human-to-human relationships are subverted in the collection, it’s because they are put on the same terrain as the animal-to-human and animal-to-animal relationships. I see Wet Specimen as a book that rejects hierarchies which place human relationships and behavior at the top, which is also connected to my perspective of bodies as pure material.
FNL: In “The New Sensation,” the speaker cries: “I have been thieved out of my body, elixered into an orgy of sensation” and closes with “Give me shape again. I am a blank field. Clarify my hill.” What role does grief play in the speaker’s relationship to her body?
AR: “The New Sensation” is that feeling you have when you’re sick and all you want is the emptiness of health. Sickness illuminates how empty the body can be because it is a state of fullness. That poem to me is grieving the senseless body, or maybe it’s grieving a mind unaware of the body. One of the blessings and curses of chronic illness is an incessant awareness of the body. On the one hand, the intimate awareness of the body is quite beautiful, but on the other hand, the pain of sensation is overwhelming.
FNL: In “Trapped in the Conga Line, I Ruminate on Intimacy,” the speaker reflects: “my hands on his body say, come home, say you’re tense, say let me move you… We will unfleetingly and without hesitation touch each other through the dark.” What does physical intimacy reveal about the expression of love in this collection?
AR: I just love community. Not that everyone should be going around touching strangers, but we’re offered so few moments to honestly engage with one another. Technology has only widened the gap between community members. Even in my small hometown, our community is deeply stratified. Most of the love throughout the book is romantic or erotic love. “Conga Line” is one of the few poems about platonic love. We’re all just creatures looking for connection to each other, so we make up these little excuses to create intimacy. The conga line is one such intimacy.
FNL: In “Landscape with Magpies Nesting in the Blizzard,” the speaker confesses: “I think I was bad in my life. I think I did something wrong” and closes with “I’m sorry. Can I begin again? I mean I looked out the window and saw the birds and I only thought of being loved.” What does the direct address of the source of pain solve for the speaker in this collection?
AR: I’m not sure that I get a lot solved in the collection at all! I’m not very interested in solutions. I don’t think they often actually exist in life, at least not permanent ones. Disability resists solution all the time. My illness is not solvable. I’ll live with it until I die, and it’s not just me. We’ve all got to die. There’s no solution to that. We can diagnose the source of pain all day long, but that doesn’t mean it’s solved. We are mostly unknown to ourselves and each other. I’m not sure the speaker solves much, either. The end of that poem is so odd. There’s a gap between the externality of the birds and the seemingly unrelated internal experience of the speaker. Why would one watch birds and only think of being loved? There’s a mismatch between the external world and the internal world, even if the speaker seems to feel that she’s figured something out about herself.
Abigail Raley (she/they) is a queer poet and library worker from Bowling Green, Kentucky. She is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and is a current PhD candidate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Hanging Loose Magazine, HAD, The Stone Circle Review, and elsewhere, and feature themes of animalism, release, and the body as a grotesque vessel of sensuality and tenderness. Find her on Instagram @willyoubemyvalentine. Wet Specimen is Raley’s first full-length collection.
Franchesca Nicole Lazaro is an emerging editor with a passion for developmental editing and book production. She previously worked with Brink Literary Project and currently works with Tulipwood Press. Her editorial interests center on amplifying perspectives from women, asexual voices, and religious backgrounds, particularly in literary fiction, memoir, and nonfiction that explores feminism, history, technology, and media studies. She is learning Japanese and maintains a blog on women’s comics and reading. Franchesca is relocating from Seattle, Washington, to San Jose, California.
When you were younger were you ever sad for a long time?
Are we the same height?
Is it a messianic burden? To mentor someone who could potentially be great, or wind up young and dead.
Are you real for real?
I love you, Do I love you?
What do you feel, when you know you’ve taught me something?
What are you doing when you’re not realising you’re teaching me?
Have you had ancient visions too?
Beach holiday?
Or is it too soon?
Larena Amin (she/her) (b. 1999) is a London-raised poet and artist. Overarching themes in their works blend and amalgamate, bouncing off a clear foundation of ancient history, social cultures, and one’s inner-dialogue. A manual approach is pronounced in Amin’s expression and production, gently embedding her artistic contribution into the local tapestries she traverses.
Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
A man hangs scarves and bags on hooks to make a winter garden—
Or I suppose, a market
Past the white gleam of the new pediatrics on Nostrand a man says baby can I—
In a state of irritation, in a nation of emergency—
None of this, the source, but everything I see I claim and it claims me—
And I can’t really think without etymology
The more I push the language through the automated translator, the more it strips away
You are free becomes excuse me, then forgive me
Two German women sing flat English over the saz that the DJ “discovered” in a Communist-Kurdish Community Center
The lyrics bubble up above the melody: you have to face/the facts
Into Kurdish, back again, I am curious about myself becomes I’m proud
Subject becomes object, and object becomes everything—
I follow the thread to a state that is not
***
On the phone Carlos says Kurdistan is a blue ocean market
I say no, the sharks are feeding; the water is already red
And plus, I’m not interested in money
But he still tells me to snap up some property, in case it does become a country—
The face in the mirror/Talks to me
The mirror in the mirror/My speech
***
A girl says art is the last black market, that art is the quickest way to clean dirty money
What I know about value is that it rises over time
Like the sea
I propose to no one that even irritation could feel good to someone dead
But then: that’s not how the dead think
I’m born into the crush of the Uptown 4, held in place by the hot populace
We slide up Manhattan like public womb on a track
If prayer exists, I think, then this is it
In Union Square I shout JIN – JIYAN – AZADÎ into the bitter with the anarchists
A man asks who is Afrin?
And I recall that if you google Afrin, every image is of Afrin® Nasal Spray: No
Drip or Severe
City, I say, and it’s burning
And on YouTube, it’s Newroz and a man is playing saz on a chair amid the rubble
Singing Afrin, malomin—Afrin, my home
***
Of course the saz was just a backdrop for the DJ to play against, to overdub
For the club to taste, a carpet from faraway on which to wipe one’s feet
A single note can start to overtake a song
Posing the question, how much can a single vessel hold?
The more I try to press my irritation into joy, the more the language dries and turns another
Still I navigate to KurdChat.com, a room with no one in it
It isn’t that I want to feel sublime at every moment
But I just don’t feel things anymore the way I used to
Tracy Fuad (she/her) is a poet and writer based in Berlin. Her second collection of poetry, PORTAL, won the Phoenix Emerging Poets’ Prize and was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024, and will be published in the UK this year by 87press. A recipient of a 2023 Berlin Senate working stipend and 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Fuad’s poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere, and have been translated into German, Kurdish, Turkish and Spanish. Currently at work on a novel, she also co-directs the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing.
Holly Mason Badra (she/her) is the curator-editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. She received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University, where she is currently the associate director of the Women and Gender Studies program. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Meridian Magazine, The Arkansas International, The Adroit Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, CALYX, So to Speak, Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal, and elsewhere. She has been a panelist for OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish American poet. Mason Badra reads for Poetry Daily.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
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