This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Future Conditional
If you have your arms crossed in two weeks.
If there is a cursor hovering over your chin.
If in a language that does not interest me.
If you have passed with two weeks.
If you have a seat on your floor.
If in a language that is not relevant to me.
If you go for two weeks.
If a sitting is on the ground.
If I have a link in a language.
If you go for two weeks.
If the sitting is on the ground.
If I have a language in a language.
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
The first time, when the doctor inserted / the needle, I winced—not from pain but subtraction, each / sharp click reducing me to specimen.—“Redbuds”
Ja’net Danielo’s This Body I Have Tried to Write is compiled of ten short, yet powerful poems on the author’s struggle with cancer (MAYDAY, 2022). Despite the somber tone of the collection, each poem is captivating. You can almost feel the blood dripping from the doctor’s needles, the despair and rejection from the other cancer-afflicted, and the quiet fury from Danielo herself.
When my time came, / I said to the surgeon / I’m not ready, / by which I meant / not for the blade / on the tongue, / but the knife / my body would take / to itself, for that final / moment.—“That Episode of 90210 When Brenda Finds a Lump”
As someone who hasn’t experienced cancer first-hand, it’s difficult to comprehend the suffering Danielo and others like her face. One particular area that most cancer patients deal with, and that is the most frightening to me, is agonizing over time. Indeed, time is often referenced throughout Danielo’s poems, and it is one of the many elements that drew me closer to her experiences. Danielo’s second poem, “That Episode of 90210 When Brenda Finds a Lump,” encapsulates the many moments of staring at the clock, of staring at the calendar, of staring at the skies as each passing moment brings them closer to Death’s doorstep. There were instances where the victims didn’t want to know about how much time they had left, and I was immediately reminded of my deceased grandparents who had also been plagued by this silent killer. Did they feel the same as Danielo’s victims as their cancers ate them from the inside out? Or did they ask to see the remainder of their life cord laid out on a surgical table? I may not have the answers to these questions, and they possibly didn’t either, but I do know that Danielo has offered me insight into that infectious world that has “pulled you / to it’s blood & bone ache, held / you close, [and] just would not let go.”
Today, / a Ukrainian woman told Russian soldiers to fill / their pockets with seeds, so sunflowers would grow / from their dead bodies & this is hope somehow like / paper cranes that dangle from the ceiling of the Todd / Cancer Pavilion, where bald & breastless women wait / to be called.—“Metastasis”
I appreciate that Danielo offers moments of contemporary references as well as religious symbolism to convey her feelings on cancer. Of them, my favorite is when Danielo specifically cites Judas in her fifth poem, “REDBUDS.” Throughout my journey as a reader, I’ve discovered that authors never offer up anything by accident and especially those tidbits that include flowers or plants. Thus, I found that Judas Iscariot was said to have hung himself on a redbud tree after betraying Jesus Christ, and I realized Danielo feels as betrayed by her own body as the Lord did by his disciple and as Ukrainians felt as their brothers and sisters from the neighboring land attacked their nation.
This body I have tried to write, / this betrayal, to trace its roots in my blood, / through the labyrinth of my mother’s / genome.—“This Body I Have Tried to Write,”
I can’t imagine the courage it takes to write about one’s potential impending demise, let alone sharing that vulnerability with the world, so I commend Danielo on trusting us with her pain and suffering. In fact, Danielo has given me one of my favorite things to read; not the hardships they experience, of course, but that they are willing to hand over some of the most sensitive and heart-wrenching details of themselves to complete strangers. This represents a belief and hope that others will empathize and sympathize with her, and I absolutely love it. On a parting note, and within the final poem, Danielo reveals that she wants to “write myself into memory.” Danielo can rest assured that she has, indeed, left a mark on my heart and will survive in my memory for a very long time.
Eden Stiger is a Kentucky-bred, Ohio-living college undergraduate who recently received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing from the University of Findlay. She is the current poetry editor and layout editor for the literary magazine Slippery Elm.
Zoë Fay-Stindt’sBird Body offers readers a fresh mythology, one that is avian and ardent, through which we may better understand ourselves. There are no black and white solutions, but there is humidity, desire, breath. The poems explain that, by accepting the harm our bodies have housed, we can find the wings to evolve, if not to escape. In their responses to my questions, Fay-Stindt discloses the transformations their manuscript underwent to become Bird Body.
Marah Hoffman: The collection’s three sections–the priming, distress signal, and finally soft places to land–and their accompanying epigraphs gracefully provide context for the poems. How did you decide on these sections?
Zoë Fay-Stindt: Thank you! I’m glad they land—no pun intended. As a trauma recovery narrative, non-linearity is a really important element of Bird Body’s structure, so organizing the poems into clean, legible sections seemed really strange. That said, finding clarity through the containers that each section offered was such a relief for me! I owe that relief, actually, to the literal floorboards of Sundress’ Firefly Farms: I had all but given up on Bird Body when I came to Sundress for a writing residency, and I decided to give the chapbook one last overhaul to see if it might be salvaged. Spreading the collection’s pages out on the floor let me step into the mess of the project for the first time in several years, and from that chaos, these three sections gathered themselves up. These are the magic moments of writing: when it feels like the work is more in charge of itself than you are and you just have to step back to let it do its thing.
MH: Specifically in the section the priming, the poems pulse with wanting and the shame that follows. In “the last summer of innocence” are the lines, “I the shameful/leader of our trespasses, horrified/at my appetite, blooming predator” (15). And in “pap smear,” “my consumption/far beyond the suggested amount” (17). As the collection progresses, consumption continues to be a theme. How can birds help us understand our desires?
ZFS: Mmm, that’s an interesting question. It makes sense that want, shame, and consumption show up a lot. Writing this chapbook, I was trying to wrestle with the lessons that the body—especially an AFAB body coming into sexuality, desire, queerness, and hunger—gets taught about its worth as a sexual object. This first section, the priming, tried to hold these ideas of shame and desire up to the light without offering any clear answers. The poems in here speak to the real messy process of trying to make sense of that “priming,” and the language of shame that I microdosed all through adolescence.
ZFS: To answer your question about the birds, I’m actually not sure I know how they can help us understand our desires! But in Bird Body, at least, they helped me find a surrealist escape that wasn’t anchored in dichotomies of good/bad or right/wrong. Moving beyond the human world, I could let go of the shame I had inherited around my body, my desire, and the violence I had experienced.
MH: There is a tone of reclamation that sparks in distress signal. The speaker proclaims, “In my mythology…” (24). Overall, the poems express invention: symbols metamorphose, archetypes take flight. I say all this to bring me to my question, what was your research process like? It’s clear that amidst your experimentation is an awareness of the Bible, fables, and mythology.
ZFS: The speaker in these poems—and the younger version of me—was really hungry for a mythology that could step outside of the virgin-whore complex and greet their body as the beautiful, confusing animal that it was. My research process wasn’t very structured for this project, actually, but I did tuck into a lot of varying mythology to think about how birds have been represented in religious texts across the centuries, and birds often appeared as creators—or at least present during the creation of life. If birds were our guides or creators rather than a man-like figure, what kind of possibilities could that offer to envisioning a world beyond violent legacies?
MH: Were your poems inspired by any particular landscapes and/or seasons? I noticed a few pieces describe settings that are warm and wet–traditional descriptors of fertile places, despite the collection’s complicated relationship with maternity. To add a second question, would you like to speak to this juxtaposition?
ZFS: Oh, yeah. I was raised humid: growing up in North Carolina swamp country, the world around me was a rich and thick place. I still feel most alive when I’m in sweat-wet places—so much living goes on there! I love that humidity seeped through the poems so much.
MH: I am a huge fan of the second person, and I noticed you are too! “You” has many different owners throughout the collection: birds, a lover, the speaker’s mother, the speaker themself. What were your goals for point of view (and pronouns) as you wrote Bird Body?
ZFS: I think I’d be lying if I said I had any explicit goals for this, but thank you for the generosity of your question! Thinking about it retroactively, second person often takes hold in my poetry as a response to an always-shifting sense of distance between myself and the “outside” world. The boundaries around me feel forever in flux, and second person allows me to simultaneously hold the world at arm’s length (with boundaries, even as they fluctuate) while still stepping into deep intimacy. Beyond the page, that feels true to my experience of the world: I’m always in direct address. Always in conversation with you—you, Marah, or you, heron, or you, Mom, or you, cypress. These beings crowd my sense of self—delightfully, strangely—and the second person lets all those creatures in. I love how even that phrase, the second person, acknowledges a presence. A doubling. That feels true.
MH: While acknowledging the aches and ruptures, Bird Body spotlights awe. The personification of good’s malleability seems to be the heron, this otherworldly creature that can both swallow baby birds and bless a horizon. Would you mind explaining why herons are significant to you? What do they have to say about the notion of ‘good’?
ZFS: Hmm, that’s a really interesting question. I think, as I mentioned before, that a lot of my process of writing Bird Body was trying to figure out what the hell “good” meant in this world. Also, what does that even mean? The heron in Bird Body often appears as a complicated figure—a healer, a companion, but also, as you point out, a creature who hunts, who hungers. This felt important to me to sit with, and to, once again, step into a reality that’s almost never as black and white as we’d like to imagine.
MH: Lastly, a question I always love to ask is, what was your revision process like? Any advice to other writers who are compiling a poetry manuscript?
ZFS: Whew! Yes. An important question with an always-messy answer. As I mentioned earlier on, my revision process usually involves a lot of printed versions of the collection to make sense of the work as an embodied, separate being. Who are these poems, and what are the conversations they’re having? Spread out on the floor, I can get a real sense of them. I also like to take myself to a café and sit down with my manuscript-in-process to meet her again: who is she? What is she doing? What’s she been up to while I was sleeping, eating, taking a bath? After gathering a draft of my manuscript together and putting it down for a while, I like to come back to the work, read through it as a whole, and write down my general sense of what the collection is working towards and what questions it’s raising. I’m almost always surprised. I think that’d be my general advice: leave your manuscript alone for a while. Go for a several months-long walk. Then let yourself listen to what the work is telling you beyond what you thought you wanted the work to say, and see how you can honor that.
Zoë Fay-Stindt is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American South. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and PoetLore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, poetry editor for the environmental journal, Flyway, and a community farm volunteer. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com.
Marah Hoffman has a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College. In college, she served as co-poetry editor of Green Blotter Literary Magazine and Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society president. From the LVC English department, she won The Green Blotter Writer Award. She has been featured in journals including Green Blotter, LURe Journal, Oakland Arts Review, Beyond Thought, and Asterism. Now, she supports Sundress Academy for the Arts through her role as Creative Director. Marah loves creative nonfiction, intertextuality, whimsicality, cats, lattes, distance running, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her list of favorite words grows every week.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
DEAR: I am writing the alphabet with my left foot at five in the morning
I am peeling this moment and finding it skinned
Now, peering behind the heap where I think a man is skinning a sheep
A boy is sharpening knives on a bicycle
I am rubbing the leaves with milk to make them shine
The hard road is soft enough to become grooved where buses veer to bypass
I am not a flower, I said to the bee
Though I may turn my face to the light
Tomato, persimmon, persimmon
I will eat a nut before I sleep
I have been on this video call for months!
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from space neon neon space by luna rey hall, released by Variant Lit in 2022.
say it with me
text of poem
we want a queer-ass story,
with queer-ass characters,
in a queer-ass setting
with them queer-ass earrings
& boots & those queer-ass flicks,
& subtle shades of gemstone,
tongues
ravaged by love,
that queer-ass elder letting us know
that new they/them
tiktoking their queer ass off, that salt breeze
from lake superior
bristling those queer-ass nose hairs
& all our hands in the water,
sand caught in the fat of our cuticles,
that gentleness
when night begins to take over
& there ain't a hint of trauma,
zero sadness
in this story
& fuck you
for thinking
otherwise.
luna rey hall is a queer trans writer. they are the author of four books including the upcoming novella-in-verse the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023). her poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from space neon neon space by luna rey hall, released by Variant Lit in 2022.
i didn’t tell my best friend i was non-binary because we were bros
text of poem
when i run my hand
through water,
which sensation
should i be feeling?
the relief
of a summer night,
minnesota cool. or
the consuming feeling.
that all of you
is
submerged
& sure, you can
pull it out
whenever you please,
but for a moment
you are surrendered
to the
lake.
when i talk to the sky,
should i be shouting?
it really doesn't matter.
i guess, now, he knows.
luna rey hall is a queer trans writer. they are the author of four books including the upcoming novella-in-verse the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023). her poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce the results of the 2023 Poetry Broadside Contest judged by Kanika Lawton. This year’s winner is Kenzie Allen with the poem “Love Song to the Man Announcing Pow Wows and Rodeos.” Allen’s poem will be letterpress-printed as an 8.5″ x 11″ broadside and will be made available for sale in our online store. Orders for our broadside will be open this summer.
Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist; she is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Kenzie is a recipient of a 92 NY Discovery Prize, the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and the Littoral Press Prize, as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Summer Words, and Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po). A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her work can be found in Poetry, BostonReview, Narrative, Poets.org, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she is currently an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing at York University in Toronto.
The judge of the 2023 Poetry Broadside Contest was Kanika Lawton, a Cambodian-Chinese Canadian writer, editor, and film scholar. They are a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Cinema Studies Institute and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, they have received fellowships from Pink Door, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts and have been published in Vagabond City Literary Journal, Longleaf Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Parentheses Journal, among others. They are the author of four micro-chapbooks, most recently Theories on Wreckage (Ghost City Press, 2020). Born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, they now live and work in Toronto, Ontario.
Thank you to everyone who sent us their work.
Runner-Up
Isaac Akanmu, “pangaea”
Finalists
Shlagha Borah, “seventh circle of hell” Ashley Cline, “yellow bruise, in #F Major (god bless Carly Rae Jepsen)” Alicia Elkort, “Eating a Pomegranate” Shana Ross, “Transparency is an Act of Defiance” Donna Vorreyer, “Sonnet Considering the Afterlife” Hua Xi, “Clock Hands”
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from space neon neon space by luna rey hall, released by Variant Lit in 2022.
at the pitch meeting for my next poem
/ one of my parents ask if i could write something / universal / & when i
ask them what they mean / by universal / they say / “well, we loved your
old poems, / the ones that aren’t so / explicit, like anyone / could read
them / & / feel.” / then the other chimes in / “the good old ironwood
poems, / real oak-bark teeth poems, / the bullet mouth bullet poems, / the
man / poems, the boy / poems, the damn-this-could-be-religion poems,
/ the worried bout’ your father poems, / the ain’t nothing wrong / with
me / poems, the poems that grabbed the velvet / straight / off the antlers
& wrapped it around / the moon when the moon said it was shivering, /
real nightgown poems, / the poems that make us say ‘ah’ / and not ‘oh,’ /
poems that make a grandpa think / ‘my grandson ain’t so bad,’ / the poem
that makes a grandpa / say ‘my grandson,’ / poems that make someone say
‘son.’”
luna rey hall is a queer trans writer. they are the author of four books including the upcoming novella-in-verse the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023). her poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from space neon neon space by luna rey hall, released by Variant Lit in 2022.
content warning for transphobia and mention of rape
tik-tok comment section
text of poem
have you had / surgery / ? / / girl! / that explains
a lot / on a side note, / strawberry beauty blender / i need
more sleep / people like this would be better off dead
/ like / an icon! / i didn’t know you were trans /
comment not available /
*panics in bi* / queen! / well, boys we lost
another one / cringe / what’s in / women’s pants
are a guessing game
/ … until i hear “how’s it going” in a deep voice…/ your a boy lol
/ i love it when women /
comment not available
/ i’d make it like blood for the blood gods / put some
uneducated people in place / with our / sacrifices / all i see & hear
is a man who can’t accept he’s a man *shrug emoji*
/ she more girly than me / couldn’t tell she was trans mtf /
thought she cis / GIRL GLOW UP / vibes = immaculate / you/
leading him on / that’s rape but go off sis
/ comment not available
/ fortnite? tonight? / respectfully… wow! / this comment section
is down bad / love your name— “to bind”
in Hebrew / am i the only one that doesn’t get it? /
take me with you, i’m already in Georgia / against
the natural order
tbh / ur a queen!
/ comment not available /
wait m to w or w to m? / looking like lily Aldridge / um you say trans
but which way / comment not available /
why would you do this? / GIRL! / it’s not too late
to repent for your sins! / transitioning towards
freedom of gender / wait you’re trans!? /
/ /
this comment section does not pass / the vibe check / skin envy /
drop the routine! / i’m proud of you / like really
/ really / proud of you / i’m obsessed,
/ every girl needs to shave her head at least once
luna rey hall is a queer trans writer. they are the author of four books including the upcoming novella-in-verse the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023). her poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Trans/Nonbinary Writers Retreat, which runs from Friday, June 9th through Saturday, June 10, 2023. This event will be entirely virtual held via Zoom. All SAFTA retreats focus on generative writing, and this year’s retreat will also include the following craft talk sessions: “Queering the Lens: Trans Ekphrastic” and “The Poetics of Addiction: Imagery, Symbolism, and Juxtaposition in Writing Alcoholism.”
The event will be open to trans and nonbinary writers of all backgrounds and experience levels and provide an opportunity to work with many talented authors and poets from around the country, including workshop leaders jason b. crawford and Remi Recchia and keynote speaker Ina Cariño.
Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner with an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. In 2021, Ina was selected as one of four winners of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest.
Jason b. Crawford (they/them) was born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI. They are the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz and an MFA candidate in poetry at The New School (‘23).
RemiRecchia is a trans poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a PhD candidate in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the CimarronReview and Book Editor for Gasher Press. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. Remi is the author of Quicksand / Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021) and Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and the editor of Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications 2024).
The total cost of attendance is $75. To apply for a fellowship, please send a packet of 5-12 pages of writing (poetry, fiction, or nonfiction) along with a brief statement on why you would like to attend this workshop to safta@sundresspublications.com no later than March 31, 2023. Winners will be contacted mid-April.