This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from they/she/he: ritual to forget your (un)becoming by dezireé a. brown (Host Publications 2025).
are you a boy or a girl, her niece asks,
and I turn to smoke,
watch the wilted / sun
gallop / from the trees
planted / on my chin
my body / a vortex
my body / an echo
my body / set out
in the lake / a tomb
of chest / hair and broken
teeth / her voice / a shower
of pebbles / before the wind
puts on / a dress
and carries my breasts / out to sea
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.
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.
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