Sixty Search Dropdown Menu

WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!

·

In a sequel to her 2019 zine “The Wagons Ain’t Here Yet…”, poet Joss Barton confronts ongoing genocide, authoritarianism, and cultural violence and resists the necropolitical state through an apoplectic transsexual liturgy.

A macabre illustration of a red skull being crushed by a stripper heel. A purple scorpion crouches beside the skull with blood dripping from its pincer and stinger. Black and white plants appear to sprout from the skull. A crimson sun is setting against the black horizon.
Image: A macabre illustration of a red skull being crushed by a stripper heel. A purple scorpion crouches beside the skull with blood dripping from its pincer and stinger. Black and white plants appear to sprout from the skull. A crimson sun is setting against the black horizon. Illustration by summer mills.

(AmeriKKKa)

Good morning hero: good morning pure dollar bill: good morning blonde american pussy: good morning pocket casino: good morning bullet shrapnel rash: good morning rage tear flags: good morning undocumented field hands: good morning mothers weeping: good morning poet tweaking: good morning teargas screams: good morning slave patrol dreams: good morning hung hustlers: good morning crushed Percocet pills: good morning sacred black femmequeen: good morning bones beneath our bloody feet: good morning fire bombed police station: good morning glorious sniper rifle: good morning white mold berries: good morning silverfish poverty: good morning concentration camp infant prisoners: good morning gonorrhea cumyolk: good morning christofascist collapse: good morning pulsing lamprey nest: good morning blue heron shrouded in river mist: good morning wings beating towards
the sun.

(Philadelphia, PA)

Writing at this moment feels incredibly shocking. Shocking because what is happening right now can barely be described properly outside of unimaginable horror. Even the cold documentations seem to birth new forms of terror and despair. The spines of starving children in Gaza ripping out of their ashen skin with every dying breath do all the screaming for them that their vocal cords cannot. The concentration camps in our country openly recruiting gestapo officers with starting salaries in the six figures. People are being kidnapped off the streets, ripped from their homes, and sent to torture chambers.
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
The morning is an execution.  The stars a mass grave.  How many will flee across borders to escape this MAGA parade?  How many of us will be left behind?  How many more times will we hear the phrase 'for one of ours all of yours'?  And how much of our souls will be destroyed in the unfolding birth of their glorious blue chip hell? 
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS!
The masked fascists flaunt their toys:  flares, flags, grenades, chemical weapons, sonic wave guns, riot shields, tinted windows, aryan ink, black drones, canine robots, tasers, broken teeth, smoke bombs, batons, bullets, bullhorns, barbed wire.
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS!

The zombie regime recites the pledge of annexation.  The zombie secretaries pray to the fathers of eugenics.  The zombie senators tell us to die peacefully.  The zombie pigs snort mountains of cocaine.  The zombie newscaster says there are two sides.  The zombie socialite sucks zombie cock.  The zombie influencer can’t be bothered.  The zombie baker bakes a monster cake.  The zombie university only teaches supply and demand.  The zombie ambassador falls asleep at the podium.  The zombie state department purges all trannies and queers.  The zombie mayor takes the bribe.  The zombie art institutions respectfully rejects your application.  The zombie megachurch prays for healing of the zombie nation.  And the zombie president drools for the cameras.  

WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
This administration is killing us.  Hunting us.  Erasing us.  They won't stop until we are all gone.  Until they bleed, what are we even fucking doing? Until every single one of their wagons burns none of this ends.  Until we gather behind massive collective care and resistance, these wagons will continue to amass their trails of repression, expulsion, captivity, and death. There is no longer any debate over hyperbole or hysteria or fear-mongering over their desire for a new era of Manifest Destiny.  The wagons are here. 
NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO FUCKING DO ABOUT IT?
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
Holy Mother Miss Major Griffin-Gracy ascended into her final transition on October 13th, 2025.  Born in 1946 and raised on the south side of Chicago, Miss Major rioted at Stonewall, became a prison abolitionist alongside political prisoners in Attica, organized care networks for those dying of AIDS, developed drop-in services for trans sex workers, and built a legacy of love and nourishment for black trans communities across this country.
Miss Major details in a recorded conversation for the New York City Trans Oral History Project how we as transgender people have been criminalized throughout history. She describes Chicago pigs waiting for the children to pump across 22nd and Cermak in their Lord & Taylor furs and New York pigs who sent the gurls to prison for carrying condoms in their purses.
"Actually [growing] to be an older person without a record, or fingerprints, or abuse from the police. And being handcuffed and having your wrists shoved behind your back and bumping your head as they put you into the back of a patrol car. Tripping you as you're walking and you fall and scrape your knees, tear your dress and your stockings*," NYC Trans Oral History Project, December 16th, 2017, Interview Transcript #054
She was a lion of transgender liberation and how she carried her life and her love for our people should be a map for how to move forward through this darkness.  She explains that it is small communal resistance that gives us the courage to move forward through the world despite its laws, bans, and attempts to deny us our dignity.
"It’s the needs of my community that are important and I’ll hop over twenty mother fuckers to make sure one of my girls is safe. Because we have suffered so long, so hard, so often and so intently that if we get the chance to get some moments break... if I can provide that, I’m going to give it to them. There’s a history here. There’s a culture of who we are.**" NYC Trans Oral History Project, December 16th, 2017, Interview Transcript #054
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!          
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS!
WAGONS! WAGONS!
A black and white photograph of covered wagons traveling the Oregon trail.
Image: A black and white photograph of covered wagons traveling the Oregon trail. Image courtesy of the National Park Service.
WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! WAGONS! 
The bright shadows of love are still here despite another day's loss
Care is a quiet urge
Soft trembles of nerves stretching towards each other
A demand that plasters the tongue
Yes, I need you
Care is us carrying the watering pots together
Rinsing away the dirt and summer bugs
Care is returning to the world with no hesitations
No Fear
An admission
A choir
Care is me processing my own shit before I ask you to clean up yours
I look at how this world has cared for me despite all the challenges my people face
I board a train to Philadelphia to visit my trans daughter
I read another transsexual Substack
I think about how poor I am and who I can ask for money when I fly home tomorrow
My daughter asks me to speak to her students at Penn about transsexual cultural life
I scan my notes for something of resonance to give them
The melatonin drips through the skull as the train roll through fields of yellow wheatgrass
The conductor's call awakens my mind and I scramble to collect my luggage as I depart the train
The station's sterile bricks sit empty and still
I roll my luggage down the street towards campus
Students fill the sidewalks
Their open eyes a window a screen a wrinkled page
My daughter finds me on the block
YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY BITCH!
We cackle offensively
Holding each other in quiet joy
We climb the ivory stairs toward her office
She asks if I'll read one of these tranny pornhub poems
These drug soaked indoctrinations of lavish transsexual life but
It is the lineage of transgender love that have shaped and held me through
these years
A sublime path through all this fear & loathing
I think of Miss Major
Cecilia
Sylvia
Marsha & all of us
Still here fighting to live
Fighting to love and be loved
I tell her I want to teach the children about my sister Bryn Kelly and her gorgeous devastating brilliance
The classroom opens
We sit in a circle
I say hello
And
We begin.
(Phoenix, AZ)
I.
                                                       PASTORAL PULPIT FAWNING IN LINEN PERSECUTION 
RED GLASSY EYES 
THUNDERSTORMS RAINING MAGA APPLAUSE 
FOG MACHINES EJACULATING NEON BILLOWED STAGE LIGHTS 
OH KING OF GLORY!
OH LIVING GOD!
OH PRINCE OF POPULIST PAIN & WHITE GRIEVANCE!
OH VEILED FAGGOT PROPHET!
HIDE THY FACE 
& BOW TO THE THRONE OF DESOLATE EMPIRE!
LET ALL EARTHLY POWERS & PRINCIPALITIES GATHER IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GOD OF ALL EXTINCTIONS! 
THE GOD OF EVERY EXTERMINATION! 
THE GOD OF EVERLASTING LIFE!
II.
Stand to face this tasseled horned beast
Wailing in brass toned hooves
Oil pirate skull flags
Blue ribbons
Red stripes
White scars
Sniper nest
Gleaming metal teeth
Nuclear weapons
Bombs over Baghdad
Screams over Selma
Star spangled wheezing
Off key
Off the rack
Chorus of crows
Murders mocking every lying state
Fog screen televisions
Tinsel sagging throats singing this nightmare anthem for
Imaginary kilos sinking into the Caribbean
III.
Mother of Pearl
Vanilla Virgin
White Dove
White Flight
Eggshell Economy
Cornsilk Cunted Chanel
Ivory Trade
Old Bridal Lace
China White
Cocaine Chalk
Powdered Sugar
Papal Smoke
Salt Pillar
Coconut Chiffon
Creampie Cumdump
Cotton Death Gown
IV.
AN ASSASSIN IS NOT A THING THAT HAS BEING 
THE ASSASSIN MUST GIVE UP HIS HUMANITY TO CREATE SOMETHING
THAT HAS BEING
THE ASSASSIN MUST CHEW ON BINARY WORKS IN THE NAME OF SOMETHING THAT HAS BEING
THE ASSASSIN MUST LABOR UNTIL SHE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CORPSE
ROTTING AMONGST THE CONEFLOWERS
THE ASSASSIN MUST LET THAT BITCH KNOW
WE 'AINT SWALLOWING YOUR SHIT
THE ASSASSIN MUST BE SMOKING ONE OF YOUR TWAT CIGARS
THE ASSASSIN MUST HAVE LOST HIS GUCCI WALLET
THE ASSASSIN MUST BE ANOTHER CHEAP SISSY CLIENT
THE ASSASSIN MUST HAVE EVENED THE SCALES
CHARLIE LIVES ON
THE ASSASSIN WILL DIE
YOU WILL SUFFER
V.
Martyrs poets preachers plumbers prostitutes politicians pigs
All of us
Stuck together in this golden desolation this temple of shit & flies & smiling nazis


The lust & longing for broken glass
Fecal coated diamonds
Freedom stained shirts
Blood soaked bibles


Holy Spirit Live Streaming
Holy Spirit Crypto
Holy Spirit Incel
Holy Spirit Embezzlement
Miss Holy Spirit USA
Our turning point

Our crowded ballroom ` Our dermal fillers

Our embossed business cards

Our death squads




Our civilization
VI. 
white nationalist furry orgy
femboy concubine fucked & filled 'til the sun rises upon this burial ground
fox grin
cuckold chair
god's gaping hole
cabinet of rapists
tranny tits
leather belts
forced feminization
BE A GOOD SLUT & SUCK HER GIRL COCK
fuck app outage
prolapse porn addiction
mistress abortions
shame kink
Viagra veins
faggots on standby
parTybottom Christ
anal apostles
CAN YOU FEEL THIS REVIVAL SURGING THROUGH YOUR SLIT?
VII.
Lynched Amaranths
White & Red Rose
Blood Carnation
Violet Wisteria
Pig Tail
Purple Thistle
Baby's Breath
Animal of War


Lists of predators & venom sacs
Lists of Senators & Heads of State
Lists of poison dart frogs their skin convulsing our lips into foam nests
Scorpion tongued brutal German mothers
NAKED COMMUNISTS SING US A VERSE FROM THE SISSY GOSPEL
Crucible of politics
Crucifix sieg heil
Tumor riddled sacrificial goat
Blue dusk peering through bullet proof glass on a wooden stage


Son of god folded into suffering corpse shape
Silent screams
Flickering European torch
Illuminated against the Mouth of Death
My favorite tweet in the immediate aftermath:
the look in his eyes as his head is blown back is proof he saw the light of Islam

Their legacy of despondence & despair
Athens
Rome
Plymouth Rock
Monticello
Mar-A-Lago
Stephen Miller balding Grand Dragon of this new multicultural Klan
Coyotes
Wolves
Cowboys
Gladiators
Brown Shirts
Bullseye



A five hour memorial of crimes & confessions: murder genocide slavery imperialism colonialism famine free trade Abu Ghraib the crack epidemic AIDS Tuskegee Black Wall Street strange fruit sterilizations the MOVE bombing the TARP bailout comfort women battered wives trauma plots Pogroms human trafficking organ harvesting crosses burning the Phillipine-American War Cambodia My Lai Mayan mass graves Bay of Pigs Skeleton Cave Yavapai Massacre Ferguson Hiroshima & Nagasaki Dachau Sarajevo Fallujah the Inquisition the Lavender Scare the Great Depression Deep Water Horizon James Byrd Sam Nordquist Duanna Johnson Vonderrit Myers Breonna Taylor Sandra Bland Roxana Hernandez
Caelee Lovelight

Antebellum widow hitting all her marks dabbing every drop of melted mascara staring boldly into every single teleprompter
Mary Magdalene memories her grief stricken caress & slow cleansing kisses upon blue bullet wound flesh
The cars race toward a bleeding sunrise the orange traffic signs point toward
another gravesite
The dead rise & fall & ask to be forgiven
A school bus straddles cement faces
their facial deformities
5ml syringe needles
dead Jews on a beach
Sudanese women holding hands as they march into the river tied to boulders
crocodiles smile at the harvest
Do you really need monsters to tell you
that they've always eaten with no remorse?
FUCK YOU & ALL YOUR OFFSPRING

The bridge between brains crumbles into the ocean
nothing feels right
the mask has been unsealed
the sky becomes black glitch
Glass splinters drowning children & pearl yachts
The creek has taken over everything
cabins
beds
desks
trucks
trailers
teddy bears
lungs caked in mud grass metal
sacrificial burial ground & transsexual political prisoners
Maybe it was our god's turn
to punish
you.
(Minneapolis, MN)
They murdered a poet
And the snow melts
They murdered a poet
And the rocks wept
They murdered a poet
And the wind froze
They murdered a poet
And the pigs danced in kettles
They cracked molars
They kicked down doors
They gassed an infant
They plucked corneas
They suffocated George Floyd
They prayed to Jesus
They demanded papers
They didn't bother to look at
And the lies they memorized are dealt
They murdered
A
Poet.
(Saint Louis, MO)
Your greatest shame fractured rib another violent drunk transsexual daughter of Eve slobbering in piss melted snow more forgiveness than you deserve a bucket of pills for our family's ailments heart disease depression anxiety nerve inflammation gender dysphoria erectile dysfunction insomnia DoxyPeP ADHD antihistamines Oxycontin HIV
Today's fascist itinerary echoes across the room steel plates and shotgun shells ricochet off the streets we sleep and sleep and sleep hoping maybe this is all a bad joke a dream a hallucination hours days weeks pass in tweaker doom-scrolls begging the question,
what will tomorrow bring?
Smoke raptures another building on the north side as we shuffle our cars to the shoulder for the wailing firetrucks
This silver halo an arched crown of ache upon the rotted red bricks
The wet plywood gagging our gaping mouths
Our bodies bound by despair and desires
Carefully construct these blessings to the unspoken world
Golden Chanterelles
their tongues a flesh offering covered in dirt and pollen
The slow piano keys welling tears up into our dreams
a queer child begging for 'mones
One line at a time
Be it poetics or narcotics
Whirlpool guts death visions bedridden damsel in distress mirage lights or nebula stars melting down drainpipes daddies rusted pickup truck cruising across turquoise hill horizon
Skunk clouds drifting across Dutchtown
The eternal classroom full of stoner hicks evangelical teenagers spitwad chew bottles cans of hairspray children cussin'
The always too late train it's malfunctioning turnstiles
The porn studio directors reflected in their monitors as we bounce on our bully's cocks
Black steam tiled bathhouse and
Grizzled men pumping rhythmic
Semen shined lips
Your outlines shadow stencils fucking across lolita blue skies
languages SOLD assholes RIMMED
moans INSIDE wet GUTS
liturgy BEGGING us to LIE
Slosh of cum and shit
Thrust of cock and shit
foul paste coated latex and he stops so you can clean yourself up in the bathroom where you snuck a fleet inside your checkered Baggu as you rinse out and wipe off
White fluorescents popcorn motel gaze
the saddest minutes waiting for the trick to wash off his dick
Stale sheets
Blue Boys
Marlboro Reds
Microwave the coke plate
The lime hard seltzers smell like bubbling meth pipes
Popper perfumed Bottega the fatal mistake of a woman on the run the neon tears burning a ceremonial death a release a song that makes you shed every single cell writhing in the pool of every single breath ever exhaled every lovers lips every bone every drug every nightmare the floor is open the speakers hum in glorious hunger look directly into the camera swallow the blades and let the earth and his mouth collapse upon your tits.
(Macon, GA)
I AM THE EMANCIPATOR!
Princess LaVonne
Pancake makeup
Piano ghost
Chain of Love
Lacquer brow
The Living Flame
Mirror suit conduit
Grey Hound dish pit
Chitlin circuit
Ponk Sissy Faggot
Taxi Blues
SHUD UP!!!
Bootlegger Preacher Daddy
Billy Wright
Esquerita
Green silk
Gold Shoes
Wild Cat
Shakedown
Sequins
Orgy prayers
Ecclesiastes
Bible thumbing
I WAS BEAUTIFUL!!!
Flitty
Filthy
Running cunt
Writhing blues under blue club lights
Tutti Frutti
Titty eaten nasty midnight sessions
Vinyl moans
Fuck me
Fuck ME
FUCK ME
IM A STAR!!!!
A WHOLE NEW UNIVERSE BORN IN FAGGOT CUM LOADS
ROCK N ROLL
HIPHOP
HOUSE
TECHNO
POP
BALLROOM
Pussies
Percussion
Piano keys
All the white girls were screaming over me
Half a cent a record
OH JAVA WE GONNA TERRORIZE !!!
PUSSY ON THE FLOOR
SISSIES DELIGHTING UP N DOWN THE QUARTER
LONG TALL SALLY
LUCILLE
SAXOPHONES
AND THAT VOICE TEARING
CARRYING
PROPHESYING
RAN A TRAIN ON HIS BEAUTIFUL FAT ASS
RUN THRU THE CHAPEL
READ ALL THE
VERSES OF SALVATION 'TIL THIS WORLD ASCENDS INTO SWEAT SOAKED COSMIC ECSTASY
HEAVEN ON EARTH NOW
MOLLY WET NOW
PANTIES SWEET NOW
SISSIES IN TOO DEEP NOW
TRANSSEXUAL LOSS OF ALL CONTROL
FAGGOT INDOCTRINATION
LITTLE WHITE BABIES CORRUPTED
HE WAS WALKING LIKE A WOMAN
SEDUCTIVE LIKE A WOMAN
LOUD LIKE A WOMAN
WON'T SHUT UP LIKE A WOMAN
FUCK ELVIS
FUCK JERRY
FUCK PAT FUCKING BOONE
EVERYBODY LIKE TO GO TO ORGIES
SOME PPL WISHED THEY NEVER HAD TO LEAVE
IF YOU KNOCKED ON MY DOOR AND I WANTED MORE
FOR SURE
LEE ANGEL
APOCALYPSE
DIAMONDS SINKING INTO THE SEA
SIN EATER
DEVIL MUSIC
SALVATION WARM LIKE PUSSY
JOY! JOY! JOY!
STAIN-GLASS SISSY
SIT IN THIS PEW
LET HIS LOVE WASH OVER U
ERNESTINE IN ALL WHITE
SHORT VEIL
ATOM BOMBED
GOSPEL DIMENSION
KEY INDUCED RAPTURE
RAW
RIOTS
NO ONE KNOWS THEM BUT THEIR MOTHERS
EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET
KNOWS
MY NAME
for
Little Richard

(THE RAVE)

BLOOD ON THE PLEASERS A DISCO PURGATORY BENEATH BEAUTIFUL SKIN VOMIT & FECES & SHARDS

OF GLASS RIPPED NYLONS PENTECOSTAL REVIVALS VISIONS OF PARADISE THE SPEAKERS TREMBLE &

OUR HIPS MOVE TO THE BEATS

THE HOLE IN MY SEPTUM

BEGS

FOR

MORE

PEARLS INSIDE PUSSY GUTS GLOW TO ALL THE BURNING MACHINES

THE PILGRIM IN YOU WILL BE SACRIFICED TO THE BLOOD STEREOS YOUR SKIN WILL MELT IN GLORIOUS

RETRIBUTION THE DRUMS BECKON THE GIRLS TO THE DANCE FLOOR

WE BEAT OUR BRAIDS ON THE BODIES OF NECRO NATIONALIST ZOMBIES

THE SIREN CALL OF DISCO SUMMONS THE GODDESSES OF

HOUSE

VOGUE WITH CUNT RAGE

PULL DAGGERS FROM YOUR PURSE

SING PRAISE TO ALL THE PAINS OF OUR UNFORGOTTEN VOICES

& LET THAT BITCH KNOW!!!

A TRUE TRANSSEXUAL ENTRANCE BODIED LEATHER PAGEANT QUEENS VIALS & FURS & MUSCLE

BOTTOMS

RIPPING APART METALLIC THREADED COUTURE GOWNS CUNT GYRATIONS TOTAL LOSS OF ALL

CONTROL

GONZO GOONS

GHB

GANJACUM

POPPERS

PILLS

MOLLY

METH

M-CAT

KETAMINE

CHUBBY COCKS

TRANNY MILF

TECHNO & REVOLUTIONARY READS!!!!!!!

SATIN GLOVED SISSY SYNCHRONIZATION PUSSY ELECTRO DRUMS

MUSIC MOANS PULSATING PARADISE BAREBACK BASS LINES

&

THE CROWD CARRIES ALL YOUR PAIN AWAY UNTIL NOTHING BUT NUCLEAR DAWN

EXIST BETWEEN

US

&

THE CUNT SWEPT FLOOR

ECHOES OF TRANSSEXUALS WATCHING HOW THEIR BODIES SOFTEN

HIPS WIDEN

ASS WILDING

GROW BREASTS

GO AWWWFFFF

OPEN YOUR MOUTH

SWALLOW CUM

WORK WRISTS FANNING BANJEE CUNT

ALL THE DOLLS ON THE FLOOR SCREAMING HOUSE DECK

HALLELUJAHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SPUN SPIRITUALS VINYL SQUEALS FLOOR LENGTH ORGANZA

GLOWING VEINS COCAINE GREASED DICKS DESIGNER HANDBAGS DJ BOOTHS DISINTEGRATING INTO

ELECTRO ACID ATOMS

THIS IS FOR FAGGOTS

THIS IS FOR SURVIVORS

THIS IS FOR US

THIS KINDOM WON'T LAST FOREVER

SO WALLOW THIS SLOPPY BEAST INTO HOLY SHAKING OBLIVION

&

DANCE

UNTIL

AMERICA

IS

FUCKING

DEAD.
The End.

About the author: Joss Barton is a writer, journalist, and spoken word performance artist exploring and documenting queer and trans* life, love, and liberation. Her work blends femme-fever dreams over the soundtrack of the American nightmare. Combining prose poetry, non-fiction confessional essays, drag artistry, and spoken word stage performances, Joss examines the myriad states of queer trans womanhoods from historical, political, and pop cultural identities of death, desires, dreams, and disco.

She currently curates Transvengence: A Transgender Performance Showcase in Chicago, and her first book of poems Goodbye To A Dream Believed! Is forthcoming from FuturePoem Press Fall 2026. 

About the illustrator: summer mills (she/her) is a printmaker, illustrator, and graphic designer from Chicago. Her work is inspired by the art nouveau movement, religious/spiritual imagery and concepts, music, and various types of literature. For her, the enjoyment of creation is the patience and trust it requires her to practice.

Related Articles