Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Scream / Queen: Poems

Scream / Queen: Poems

Eskilson, CD

Paperback

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 1946724874
ISBN13: 9781946724878
Publisher: Acre Books
Published: Mar 22 2025
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.32
Height: 0.28 Width: 6.15 Depth: 8.95
Language: English
A debut poetry collection drawing on horror-movie tropes to examine the body--both its traumas and its possibilities.

Scream / Queen, CD Eskilson's debut poetry collection, examines queerness, mental illness, and transgender identity through the lens of thrillers and B movies. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Michael Myers, and the Headless Horseman are just a few of the fright-film villains and monsters that populate this book.

Eskilson's formally innovative poems document how a body--a nonbinary transgender body, a chronically ill body, a body carrying trauma--can be understood, accepted, and healed even in a violent sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the language and images of horror cinema, the poems' speakers find strength and the means to survive both family legacy and the pain inflicted on them: I want to behemoth, be the biggest / violence in the galaxy, says one who thinks about Godzilla and dreams of learning how to roar.

Though an atmosphere of trans panic and state legislation against trans bodies pervades the book, Scream / Queen ultimately conjures a world of hope and tenderness through connection and care. It celebrates all the body's possibilities: the glorious and the monstrous. As a werewolf in the book says, I kiss the moon; it took so long / to get here.

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