Preorder new words: issue 5

the fact that issue #5 coincides with the election of a fascist transphobe can’t be ignored. undoubtedly, this issue will have a special place in my heart, as i hope it will yours too. this issue is poignant and powerful, continuing to amplify the value of our lives to the world, reverberate our talent through the landscape of poetics, and challenge patriarchal language itself. While there are many themes at play in issue 5, so many poets in the issue claimed themselves, and our community, with fervor; gathering up the power of deity within them and pulling the covers off the simplicity of binary. They are not rising from ashes; they are refusing to acknowledge there ever were ashes. take Carson Sandell as an example, who implores us in the issue’s first poem:

[...]let your tongue crack, harden, it serves

no purpose here. there are no words in english

for our bodies.[...]

Sebastian Anderson echoes this revelation in Taraxacum, writing:

only the earth can have these withered bones,

don’t you dare put my body in a box,

let me rot,

let me turn into flowers.

or Gabriel Noel:

All the parts of my body

that are genderfucked are

named after god because what

else can I call the parts of me

that I have made divine.

and Nicole Yurcaba as they find a new path of language:

but i speak the other language

the one i find on the river

but this issue is so much more. it uncovers our tenderness; it offers our loneliness and heartache; it reveals the full-body of our sex; and it confronts the sickening truths of our healthcare journeys. i hope that you find some solace, identification, peace, horniness, or rage here– whatever it is that you need in this trying time.