Word Problems

Word Problems is the second book of poems from Christopher Phelps. Lyric, experimental, and prose poems ravel like strands of a trefoil knot. Philosophical and etymological investigations; personal experiences and historical questions tongue-tie and -untie one another, unfinishing each other's sentences and insistences, refrains and reframings. Searching the intimacies of divinity, personhood, and queer liberation, these poems are intrepid, heady, hearty explorations of how sources of meaning are found and find themselves anew.

Christopher Phelps lives in Santa Fe, where he teaches math and alliedmysteries. He is queer and neuroqueer, autistic and aphantasiac, twainbows that motivate and illuminate his creative steadfascination. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Broken Lens, Does It Have Pockets, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, and Poetry Magazine, among other journals. Cosmosis, his first full-length book of poems, was published in 2025. Tremblem, a chapbook, was printed in 2018 in a limited edition. Find more in the lost & found atwww.christopher-phelps.com.