feeld - Softcover

Charles, Jos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571315055 ISBN 13: 9781571315052

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2018

Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Selected by Fady Joudah as a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, Jos Charles’s revolutionary second collection of poetry, feeld, is a lyrical unraveling of the circuitry of gender and speech, defiantly making space for bodies that have been historically denied their own vocabulary. 

“i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.” In feeld, Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles’s electrifying transliteration of English—Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect—what is old is made new again. “gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage.” “did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye.” The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer—making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy. 

Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.

About this title

About the Author

Jos Charles is a trans poet, editor, and author of the collection Safe Space. She is the recipient of the 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation and the 2015 Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship. She received an MFA from the University of Arizona and currently resides in Long Beach, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I.

thees wite skirtes / & orang
sweters / i wont / inn the feedynge marte /
wile mye vegetable partes bloome /
inn the commen waye / a grackel
inn the guarden rooste / the tall
wymon wasching handes /
or eyeing turnups
/ the sadened powres wee rub / so economicalie /
inn 1 virsion off thynges /
alarum is mye nayme
/ unkempt & handeld
i am hors /
i am sadeld / i am a brokn hors

***

II.

next inn line
at the feemale
depositrie room / mye
jossled eggs
inn a witen sack /
were that i were goldenne
mye rayte / the tayste off gold
inn eggs / cravyng a room
just emtied enuff
2 curl myeself
inn / thees the dreggs / the grl beguines

***

XVI.

gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a
hemorage / the nayme scrypt & the stayte scrypt
preseed laping the milke in mye sacks / gendre lik all
sirfase is a feemale depositrie room / in that clowde
moses wept & wee exspeckte a lawe /
his fase lik lite &
r bodies goldenne in vagynoplastycitie / if u evre get
downe mye mountain / he sade pirge me with hysop /
offer mye bulock on the alter / a tran is noting but the
scens off sum burning / i a lone hav scaped 2 tell u this

***

XLVII.

i wanted so much
2 speech /
the hewman thyngs
/ i became the byrd
soot / they sent me
inn / this is wut makes us grls / thining
bye the houre

Edition details

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571315055
• ISBN 13: 9781571315052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80